


(Not Your) Superman Tonight

by torakowalski



Series: Telepaths 'verse [2]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Time, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:22:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Brian scratches his neck.  "This is the NSA," he says, "The National Security Administration.  They're feds."</i></p><p>Bob raises his eyebrows, all <i>no, really?</i></p><p>Brian winces.  "They employ telepaths.  Like Asher and-" <i>me</i>.  He can't say it.  He folds his arms.  "It's not as weird as it sounds."</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Not Your) Superman Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bandom big bang 2010. So many thanks to harborshore for betaing this monster twice in a week and cheering me on through the entire process.
> 
> There's an awesome fanmix by Shellies [here](http://torakowalski.livejournal.com/265971.html#cutid1) and a gorgeous drawing by Seewrong [here](http://torakowalski.livejournal.com/265521.html#cutid1) (spoilerific for the story) - thank you both!
> 
> The general idea for this is based on the TV movie _Thoughtcrimes_, from which I stole the National Security Administration (NSA). No knowledge of _Thoughtcrimes_ is needed.

"Schechter?" repeats the voice in Brian's ear. "Do you copy?"

Brian rolls his eyes. _No_, he thinks to himself, _Your twenty million dollar communication system is fucked. So sorry_. "Yeah, I copy," he says. Copy. What the fuck? These guys always make him feel like he's in a Bruce Willis movie. A bad one.

The brick wall at his back is cold and rough, uncomfortable even through his thick government-issue jacket and the grass is wet and gross under his ass. Brian has been holed up in less comfortable places in his life, but he'd still rather be home on his sofa watching the game than running around in the rain trying to save the day.

"Do you hear-?" the voice in his ear starts up again and Brian swats at it angrily.

"I'm not going to hear anything if you don't shut the fuck up," he snaps because he's told them this, he's told them. He cannot read people's thoughts if he can't concentrate.

There's nothing but blissful silence now and Brian sighs in relief, closing his eyes and just listening.

There are soft, frightened sounds coming from his right. It's almost too quiet for him to hear and definitely too indistinct for him to make out any words; it might be crying.

"There's something," he murmurs quietly, knowing that the asshole at the other end of the line will hear him. He pushes away from the wall and runs to the next building along, the third in a series of abandoned warehouses. Closer now, he can pick up snatches of thought: _cold_ and _dark_ and _mommy?_. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second because Jesus Christ, some goddamn advance warning that he was looking for a _kid_ might have been nice.

There's a padlocked door to Brian's right and Brian's eighty percent certain that that's the quickest way in. He presses himself up against it and listens hard again, but there's no sound. Unless this place employs people who've been taught to shield their thoughts, there's no one there. (Brian hopes there's no one here who's been taught to shield; shields feel like butting his mind against reinforced lead and trying to break though gives him migraines.)

The padlock comes apart following the judicious application of a lock pick and Brian's fist and he pushes the door open carefully. Either he's not careful enough to keep things quiet or this building is just that shitty, because the door grates open with a long, shrill groan.

Brian holds his breath. From somewhere further down the hallway, he hears someone think a question, not exactly alarmed but getting there. _Cat_ he thinks firmly, projecting a general sense of cute and harmless, even though his powers of suggestion are pretty much zero.

It doesn't work, of course it fucking doesn't, and then whoever it is, the kidnapper presumably - seriously, Brian's been given _no_ intel here - is walking toward him. Brian has two choices, back out the door and hope he can get it closed and that no one will look too closely at the lock or-- well, it's not really a choice. Brian has always been a stay and fight kind of a guy.

The person walking toward him is closer now, almost close enough to see so Brian does a quick scan: he doesn't have a gun - or if he does, he's not thinking about it, which in Brian's experience comes to the same thing - but Brian still takes cover behind a filing cabinet. It won't be bullet proof but it makes Brian feel better to not be out in the open.

The guy's thoughts are a mess of anger, blotting out anything concrete and coherent that Brian might be able to get a handle on and use. But he's thinking about the kid and there's this _rage_ and that's all Brian needs to know.

"Is someone there?"

Brian wonders if anyone has ever been stupid enough to answer that question. Then he grins to himself. Why the fuck not? He waits for the guy to round the corner. "No," he says and pops up from his hiding place while the dude is still thinking _wait, what?_

"Who are you?" he asks, glaring at Brian, and fuck, he might not have a gun but he has a huge fucking kitchen knife in his right hand. He's big, tall and broad, but young, way younger than Brian and Brian's sure he can take him.

"Yeah, I think I'm lost," Brian tries, opening his hands a little at his sides. Defenceless, he's totally defenceless.

The guy jerks his head toward the door behind Brian and takes another step forward. "Yeah you are. That door was locked before."

"Oh." Brian widens his eyes. "Was it?" _Come on,_ he thinks, _Closer_.

"It--" One more step and he's within easy reach. Brian grabs him by both shoulders and pulls, bringing his knee up to crash hand into the guy's stomach.

He gasps, winded, but he doesn't drop. Of course not, that'd be too easy.

One of his fists connects with Brian's shoulder and they fall.

_Watch the knife_, Brian hears him think, which gives Brian enough of a clue about where it ended up that he can make sure neither of them land on it. He knocks the knife away, tries to go after it but the guy is strong and Brian's technically stronger, sure, but this dude has a lot of weight on him.

Brian hits out blindly with his right elbow, landing a lucky blow near the centre of the guy's chest. He rears back but he grabs Brian's wrists before Brian can get away. Shit, rushing in here unprepared was really fucking stupid.

Oh wait, he still has his mic, doesn't he.

"A little help here guys?" he asks, grunting as his left arm is released long enough for him to get punched in the face.

There's no answer in his ear. Great, perfect, the one time he'd actually like a little communication, his mic gets smashed. Fuck.

_Knife. Left_, Brian hears and he doesn't plan, just reacts. He throws up his arm, managing to deflect the blow with the side of his forearm and grabbing the guy's face. He digs his fingernails into his cheeks, just missing his eye sockets, which he supposes is a tactical mistake, but a still a relief because he hates poking people's eyes out; it's messy.

The guy howls and Brian feels blood under his fingers. Both his arms are suddenly free and he shoves, launching himself upright and knocking the guy down onto his back. There's nothing nearby for Brian to hit him with, so he grabs the guy by the skull and smacks his head sideways into the filing cabinet.

His eyes roll back in his head and he goes still.

"Fuck," Brian says to himself. He sits up and feels for the mic on his collar. Just like he figured, it's smashed in two and the ear piece is completely gone from his ear. Flying blind, then. On a mission where he doesn't have enough fucking intel. Fantastic.

He stands up then makes a face at himself when he has to kneel back down to check the guy's pulse, pushing back longish brown hair to find it. Kid looks more like a college student than a kidnapper. His pulse is beating and the scrapes down his face don't look too bad. He'll be okay and Brian's not exactly sorry about that because he doesn't know the score here, doesn't have any reason to wish this dude dead. Unconscious and out of Brian's way, sure, but not actually dead.

Shaking himself out, Brian gets to his feet again and sets off silently down the corridor. There's no sound, vocal or mental, but Brian stays on his guard. The kid he could hear before has fallen silent and he hopes like hell that he picked the right building.

He reaches the room that his unconscious guy must have been in when he heard Brian come in. It's a kitchen, one drawer open, presumably where the guy found the knife that's now hanging comfortably from Brian's belt - which, now Brian thinks about it, is pretty weird. Still, maybe kitchen knives are the weapons of choice for the modern kidnapper; at least they're better than guns.

There's a second door leading from kitchen, and something tells Brian he should investigate where it leads. It's locked but there's a key hanging from a hook to the left; probably the kidnappers didn't expect to get interrupted by a random telepathic - very few people do, Brian's found. He likes to bring the unexpected into their lives.

He strains his... Well, he's never really had a word for it. His inner ear, maybe? Except, no, he thinks that's something else already. The thing that lets him hear people's thoughts anyway, and there's definitely someone in there. He's pretty sure it's the kid he heard earlier and he or she is probably alone since Brian hasn't heard anyone else, but he doesn't take any chances, turning the key slowly to avoid unnecessary noise. He keeps the kitchen knife is clasped tightly in his other hand.

This door swings open easily and then Brian's confronted with a steep slope of wooden steps and absolutely no overhead light switch that he can find. Shit, now would be a good time for a flashlight.

He inches carefully down the first few steps but nothing leaps out at him and the stairs don't give under his weight so he carries on down. It's stupid, he knows he's being stupid, backup will notice he's out of contact soon. He should wait, but if the kid is down here, Brian doesn't want to leave it alone any longer than he needs to.

Yeah, yeah, so he's a soft touch. Bite him.

About halfway down, the light from the kitchen behind him stops lighting the steps and Brian presses his hands against the walls on either side so he doesn't like, fall to his doom or anything unfortunate like that. He doesn't realise he's reached the bottom until he goes to take another step and the impact of the stone floor jolts up his spine.

"Hello?" Brian calls softly. The kid is thinking _hide, hide, help_ and, again, _mommy_. "It's okay. I'm here to take you home."

The kid doesn't believe him, that's pretty obvious. Brian is ninety percent certain that it's a boy and from the quality of his thoughts he can't be more than five. Brian hates trying to read kids' thoughts; they're too open, too clear, and they're hurt and confused a lot of the time.

They're also not very good at hiding and it takes Brian fifteen cautious steps and three painful collisions with unidentified metal objects to find the kid hiding under what feels like a bed. "Hey," Brian says. It's crazily dark in here; it feels surreal. He tightens his grip on whatever part of the kid's clothing he's grabbed; he thinks it's a sleeve. "Hey, come on, come with me."

"No," the kid says. His actual voice is hoarse, quieter and more subdued than his brain voice is. "I don't want to play any more."

Play? Brian thinks. That can't be good. "No," Brian says, trying to use his most non-threatening voice, except he's never really had an opportunity to develop one of those so he probably ends up sounding like he's talking to one of Bob's dogs. "No more playing, I promise. Just come out here and I'll take you home."

"I want my mommy," the kid tells him firmly, like it's a deal-breaker.

"And I will get her for you." Brian worked on tours with prima donna rockstars for a decade; he can negotiate like a pro even with no chips on his side.

There's another pause and then the kid comes crawling out from under the bed, letting Brian fumble for his hand. Standing up, the kid only comes up to Brian's hip. "What's your name?" Brian asks, already leading him back to where he hopes the stairs are.

"Charlie," the kid tells him.

"Hey, Charlie, I'm Brian." Brian's reaching hand slaps into a wall where he wasn't expecting a wall to be. Goddamn it, where are the fucking stairs?

"The stairs are this way," Charlie tells him, tugging on his hand and huh, right. It's good that one of them knows where they're going. A flashlight would be seriously fucking useful though; he doesn't like the idea of trying to get himself and the kid up the stairs in the dark.

"The flashlight lives over there. It's too high up for me."

"What?" Brian asks, stopping and looking down in Charlie's direction.

"Over here." Charlie tugs Brian along then pokes him until he raises one hand, cautiously feeling along the sill he finds just above head height.

His hands close around something solid and heavy and he brings it down, finds the switch and turns it on.

Light floods the room and Brian can finally see Charlie, who is tiny and blond and dressed in a dirty, dusty adult-sized t-shirt. The thing that Brian had thought was a bed isn't a bed at all; it looks more like an operating table. There are straps hanging loosely from the sides and strap marks on Charlie's tiny arms and Brian doesn't know what the fuck has been going on here, but he's pretty sure he's going to have to kill someone.

Except that'll have to come later; right now he has a kid to get to safety. He swings Charlie up into his arms and tells him to hang on tight. Charlie does, tiny fists bunching in Brian's collar and yeah, okay, Brian doesn't need to breathe.

Brian really does not want to try to carry Charlie out through the house but, looking around, he can't see an alternative. Secret backdoors are apparently passe for kidnappers' basements these days.

"There isn't a backdoor," Charlie says sadly, little chin digging into Brian's collarbone so he can whisper in Brian's ear, "But there's a window."

"How did you-?" Brian starts to ask before it all becomes really, sickeningly clear. _Clap your hands_ he thinks and Charlie does without question.

Okay, Brian thinks, these people kidnapped a telepathic little boy; that's bullshit. Brian is going to kick some motherfucking ass. Charlie giggles and presses his face into Brian's shoulder.

"Don't repeat that," Brian tells him. He looks around. "Where's the window?"

The window turns out to be a boarded up rectangle of cracked glass near the ceiling. It's way too high for Brian to reach, but Brian has always been resourceful. He sets Charlie down on the floor and drags the creepy torture bed over to the wall. Tipping it up on one end makes him wish he spent more time at the gym, but he manages it with some huffing and a little bit of puffing.

Brian climbs up onto the now-horizontal headboard first to check the weight. When it doesn't fall apart underneath him, he helps Charlie scramble up the bed, using the frame like a ladder.

The window is latched but the lock is rusted open, which is the kind of luck that Brian always scoffs at in action movies. He shoves the window open as far as it'll go and picks Charlie up.

"Okay, kid, can you wriggle through?" Charlie's tiny but so is the window. Brian hopes like hell he can fit through; it'd suck to have nearly given himself a hernia for no reason.

"There's cobwebs," Charlie tells him, head and shoulders through the window. He doesn't sound like he minds, more like he'd like to stop and have a closer look.

"Yeah, you can talk to the spiders later," Brian says, giving him one last push. With a wiggle and a flail of legs that gives Brian a glimpse of more bruises on his bare shins, Charlie lands on the grass just under the window.

Thank god for _that_.

Charlie twists around and sticks his head back in through the window. "Your turn," he says quickly, like he's scared Brian's going to leave him alone out there.

Brian looks pointedly at the window and raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, no," he says. "There's no way I'm fitting through there. You stay right there, okay? I'll come round to you." Assuming the kidnappers don't kill him first, obviously.

He only remembers why it's a bad idea to think things like that when Charlie's expression turns appalled. His lower lip even quivers, fuck.

"Joking," Brian says quickly, holding up his hands. "Joking, kid. I'll be right out in a minute. Don't make any noise."

He waits for Charlie to nod then climbs down awkwardly. Something about having an audience, especially a kid who needs to have some faith in him, always makes Brian smoother than he manages on his own.

Now he's on his own, Brian can take the stairs way faster than he would have risked if he'd had Charlie with him. He keeps the knife held tight in his right hands and briefly lets himself wish he carried a gun.

Before he's half way up the stairs, Brian can hear that there's someone awake and moving around out there. Great. He doesn't think it's the guy he knocked out, he can't get into this one's mind hardly at all.

He's pretty certain the person upstairs is a girl and that she's spitting mad but that's all he can pick up. He thinks she's trying to shield, but it feels like she's so angry that her control on the shields keeps slipping, giving Brian nothing useful except that she'd love to put a bullet in him.

The fact that she's trying to shield at all throws Brian; even if she knows the NSA are in the house, it's not like they advertise about employing telepaths and few people even know _how_ to shield.

He creeps up the stairs as silently as he can manage but even so he bets she can hear him coming. The idea of charging out there and getting shot doesn't really appeal. If he had a hat, he could throw it. He saw that in a movie once and he thinks it might work.

Or--

He pulls off his jacket slowly, almost certain that she doesn't hear, and launches it out the doorway.

There's instant gunfire and Brian follows a split second later, getting his hands on the woman's shoulders before he even really sees her. He presses her backwards, trying to keep her gun hand away from him while she struggles and tries to knee him in the balls, luckily only catching the inside of his thigh when he twists in time. Without missing a beat, she punches him in the nose and he feels a cascade of blood rush down over and into his mouth.

Brian spits, hopefully getting blood on her because Jesus, _ow_.

"Who the hell are you?" she snaps, punching him in the stomach while she struggles to free her gun hand from his grip.

Brian wants to ask her the same thing but he's busy and, anyway, he probably shouldn't admit that he has no fucking clue what he's walked into here.

She's strong, way stronger than she should be since she's tiny – seriously, she's about as tall as Brian -- and her gun is inching closer to his face. He needs some kind of leverage, some kind of-- He falls back suddenly, dragging her down with him and rolling out the way on impact so she hits the ground face first. She sits up, blood lining her mouth from a split lip and brings the gun up and around.

Brian kicks out, catching her wrist just where he wanted to. The gun flies away and it takes Brian a second to realise that she fired it before he kicked it out of her hand, doesn't realise what happened until he's back on his knees with a burning, nauseous pain pulsing through his left arm.

She launches herself at him, the arm he kicked pressed to her chest and her other hand raised to hit him again.

"Schechter!" someone yells from not very far away and the woman freezes, cursing under her breath.

"Schechter?" she hisses at him. Brian shoves her away with the arm that she didn't just fucking _shoot_.

"Cavalry's here," he tells her with his best shit eating grin. She doesn't stick around, he didn't expect her to. He tries to grab her ankle as she bolts, nearly catching her when she hesitates by the basement door but he misses when she runs for the back door instead. He'd chase her but he's dizzy all of a sudden, probably going into shock. He _hates_ getting shot.

"Schechter?" Someone calls again. It's Gabe..

"Yeah," Brian chokes. "Yeah, in here. There's a kid--"

"Got him," Gabe says, appearing in the doorway with Charlie peering out from behind his legs.

Charlie runs for Brian and Brian swallows back a groan when he crashes hard against Brian's side. "Woah, little guy," he says, sitting down on his ass and letting Charlie crawl into his lap. "You're okay."

He looks up at Gabe and makes a face. "There's a dude around here somewhere with a massive bump on his head and a woman with some serious ninja skills just got away."

Gabe nods. "We've got the guy." He says something into his radio, directing his team out back then kneels down in front of Brian. "Didn't I tell you to stay put and wait for backup, Schechter? I'm sure I did," he says, putting pressure on Brian's fucking _bullet wound_.

Brian just smirks, feeling loopy and tired from his rapidly crashing adrenaline. "You can't fool me, dude. You love that I make your life more interesting."

"Yeah, yeah." Gabe flashes him a neon-tinged, technicolour mental image of Gabe's cock and they're even. "Looks like you're getting a trip back to base."

Brian groans and lets his head thunk back against the wall. Charlie curls up tighter against him. Brian _hates_ the NSA medical centre, some fucking researcher always wants to talk to him about his 'talent' while he's stuck sitting still and can't tell them to go to hell.

Gabe stands up and pats him on the arm. "Next time you should do as you're told," he suggests. Brian entertains himself thinking about skewering Gabe on something sharp and painful. Charlie looks up at him with big, shocked eyes and Brian only now remembers that he needs to be more careful about things like that for now.

Brian pictures himself banging his own head repeatedly against a wall. Charlie laughs.

***

The NSA medlab is as little fun as it ever is, but at least Brian manages to convince them to patch up his arm without giving him a shot of anything. Painkillers and the like quieten the voices he hears, but it's all too easy to want to stay that way forever.

They sew up his arm and clean up his scrapes and find him a fresh t-shirt to wear home so he doesn't have to wear the one that his bloody nose erupted all over, thank god. The last time he came home from one these jaunts, he was wearing somebody else's blood from wrist to elbow and the family next door stopped letting their kids walk past his house after dark.

Charlie stays firmly attached to Brian's side, like Brian is a ship that's grown some kind of kid-sized barnacle. Brian would love to say that he minds, but the kid's bruises look even worse in the harsh light of the infirmary and Brian can't even to lie to himself.

_Does this hurt?_ Charlie asks, poking Brian just above his bandage. Both Charlie's little arms are wrapped from wrist to elbow and Brian can't think about that too closely without feeling his rage rise again.

"Ow," Brian says because he's learned that it makes the kid laugh. Evil, sadistic child that he is.

"I like your friend, Brian," a laughing voice says, just before Victoria Asher steps into Brian's cordoned off little cubicle. Victoria is the NSA's pet telepath; she's kind of like what Brian would have been if he hadn't spent all those years on the road doing his best to avoid this shit.

Charlie looks up at Victoria, tipping his head to study her. _Hi, there_, she thinks at him and he turns pink and crawls around to hide behind Brian.

Brian is not charmed. Victoria might be but Brian is not. No way.

"Charlie, this is Victoria," Brian says over his shoulder. "She's come to take you-" _home?_ he thinks at Victoria, quick as a flash, hopefully too quick for Charlie to pick up on. Victoria shakes her head. "She's come to take you somewhere safe."

"You said I could go home," Charlie says, propping his chin on Brian's shoulder and wrapping his arms around Brian's neck from behind. "You _said_."

"I know." Brian is flying blind here. All of Victoria's shields are up; whatever she's been told, she does not want Charlie to know. Shit. "But Victoria's real nice." Inadequate, so fucking inadequate. "And we want to make sure those" _assholes_ "people didn't hurt you."

Reluctantly, Charlie lets go of Brian and climbs down off the gurney. "Okay," he says, looking up at Victoria with his chin set. If Brian were the kind of guy to get mushy over brave little kids, now would be the time. It's pretty lucky, he thinks, that he's not that kind of guy.

***

**Then:**

By the time Brian was sixteen, the fact that he sometimes heard voices in his head was getting to be a _thing_.

"Brian, stay behind," said Mr Murray, who was approximately Brian's least favourite teacher. (There was a lot of competition but Murray was really an asshole.)

Brian scuffed his toe of his Chucks against the leg of Murray's desk and ducked his head, trying to get a look at his day planner from under his bangs.

"I have your quiz from last week," Murray said, waving it too quick for Brian to see.

"Yeah?" Brian asked, trying not to look too interested. He _knew_ he'd done well and he knew it had to be killing Murray who liked to think of Brian as a lazy son of a bitch.

"Congratulations," Murray said dryly, "You've earned yourself a retake. Shall we say this Saturday?"

What the fuck? Brian thought and only just managed not to say that aloud. "Why?" he asked instead, seriously not caring how insolent he did or didn't sound.

Murray shrugged slowly. "Let's just say that I'm surprised that you could get ninety-eight percent on the test when you didn't actually attend any of the classes."

Brian opened his mouth to argue then snapped it closed. "I read the textbook," he muttered because that was true. And it sounded better than explaining how sometimes he could sit down to take a test and just... know the answers, like they appeared fully formed in his head. He knew that made him sound like a crazy person, but it was also what happened, so.

Murray smiled his wide, ugly smile. Brian had never seen any actual humour on his face. It was creepy. "Then you'll have no trouble with the retake." He waved his fingers in Brian's direction. Brian was tempted to bite them off. "See you on Saturday."

"Whatever," Brian said and turned on his heel.

"Arrogant little jerk," Brian heard Murray say clearly and he turned around, anger spiking. Murray was hunched over his desk, scribbling in his jotter. He didn't seem to realise Brian hadn't left yet.

Jesus, Brian could not wait until he could get out of his fucking school.

He was in a foul mood so he didn't go home, home just made everything worse these days. He stayed in the school parking lot, leaned his hands on the hood of his beaten down old car and scrapped his ragged fingernails against the paintwork.

"Dude, don't do that," said a voice behind him and then there were hands on top of his, curling their hands on top of his so his fingers tucked against his palms.

Brian only didn't throw a fit only because he recognised that voice and his hands recognised those hands.

"The fuck are you doing here?" he asked, because Ewan went to school across town and never usually set foot inside the gates of Brian's fancy-ass school.

Ewan nosed Brian's collar aside to lick his neck. Brian hoped Murray was watching and having some kind of stroke. "You were late," he said like it was normal to miss Brian.

Brian turned around and tipped his chin up a little, as close as he was ever going to get to saying, _I'm having a bad day. Kiss me?_

Ewan smiled and kissed him, rubbing his smile back and forth across Brian's lips. This thing they had wasn't going to last, Brian knew that, Ewan was far too nice a kid to put up with Brian's punkass-ness for too long but Brian was enjoying this whole having a real boyfriend thing too much to try to rush the ending.

"Stupid fucking school," Brian grumped once they'd pulled apart.

Ewan made an exaggerated pouty face at him. He was mocking Brian but Brian didn't actually care. "Fuck 'em?" he asked and Brian surprised himself by laughing.

"Yeah," he said, "Fuck 'em." He swung the hand Ewan was still holding on to. "Want to get out of here?"

"Oh yes," Ewan agreed and followed Brian into the car.

***

Brian was in a way, _way_ better mood by the time he actually got home. That lasted until he was half way through the front door and his dad snapped his name from the kitchen.

Ugh, Brian thought. "What?" he yelled. Things had gotten hot and heavy after he and Ewan had parked up; he'd kind of like a shower or, at least, not to have to stand in front of his dad with dried jizz in his pants.

"In here. Now."

One day, Brian was going to get the fuck out of this house and never come back. His mom and his brothers would have to meet up with him in places miles from here and his dad could go fuck himself for all Brian cared.

Okay, so maybe Brian had a few rage issues; it's not like they weren't justified.

"What?" he asked, trudging into the kitchen where his dad stood against the counter, arms folded over his chest, his _I'm your father and we're going to have a serious conversation_ expression in full force.

"The school called." Oh, good. That was always the kind of thing Brian liked to come home and hear. He wondered if Murray had called to whine about Brian's test or about him getting his gay on in school grounds.

Brian raised his eyebrows inquiringly and tried to look interested.

His father shook his head. "Cheating, Brian? Really?"

Brian had to swallow hard so he didn't demand to know where his dad got off sounding disappointed in him. It wasn't like he'd ever put much effort into raising him.

Seriously, fuck that noise. Talk about guilty until proven... Well, no one seemed interested in proving he was anything else at all.

"I didn't cheat," Brian said. Answers randomly popping into his head wasn't cheating.

His father waved a hand, like arguing was just too much effort. "Either way, I don't appreciate getting calls from your school."

"Why?" Brian snapped, hearing himself and knowing he should stop there but not stopping. "Did you have to stop banging Mrs Hoyland for a minute to answer the phone."

He hadn't known until that moment that the waves of guilt, the snatches of potential apologies he heard whenever Mrs Hoyland, their next door neighbour, came around for lunch with his mom, actually added up to something real, not until he saw the expression on his dad's face.

Fuck.

"I don't know what you're-," his dad started to deny but it was too late. Brian was furious and kind of freaked out because how did he _know_ that? His breath was coming too hard and he wanted to lash out and punch his dad in the mouth.

"Why don't you get out," Brian said, shoving his hands in his pockets so it wouldn't be obvious that they were shaking. "Go move in with Mrs Hoyland, I don't care, but stop cheating on Mom."

"You don't know what you're talking about," his dad said, denying it again, but Brian knew now that he was right.

He was getting a headache and rubbed at the place between his eyebrows. There was a weird buzzing in his ears, adrenaline properly. Except, adrenaline didn't usually come in the form of whispers: _how?_, _what?_, _what gave it away?_ all in a voice that wasn't quite his dad's but he somehow knew came from his dad anyway.

Brian rubbed his forehead harder and tried to see if his dad's lips were moving. Great, his dad was a cheating asshole, and Brian was hearing voices again. His mom was going to have a _great_ night.

"Go to your room," Brian's dad said and Brian wasn't done here but his head really ached all of a sudden so he had no choice, stumbling away and up the stairs.

His headache dimmed once he was in his bedroom and he closed his eyes, kneeling by the bed and pressing his face against the cool sheets. He took a couple of deep breaths.

Stress, it was stress. Stress made you do weird things, it could totally make you imagine that you could hear your father's thoughts. Right?

_Do I have time to get milk?_ popped straight into his head and he blinked, shook his head, because that hadn't been his dad. Now his brain was just inventing new voices to fuck with him. _Problems on the trains_ \- and that was another voice. _If that fucking mailman hits my fence one more time..._

"Stop it," Brian told his brain. Seriously, if it wanted to make shit up, it could at least make it exciting.

_Chicken pie tonight._

Brian put his hands over his ears. "La la la," he hummed to himself.

There was a knock on the door. "Brian?" his dad called. "We need to talk."

_Something's wrong. Why's he singing? Fucking kid, nothing but trouble._

Brian lifted his head, inhaling a mouthful of dust and feathers from the comforter. He was fine, totally fine. Just hearing voices, nothing serious.

He stood up, planning to open the door because he never could back down from a fight. As soon as he was on his feet, the voices escalated around him like a tornado, like being thrown into the middle of the Superdome on the day of the Super Bowl: screaming, crying, laughing, shouting, all the sounds hitting him at once until he was sure his ears must be bleeding.

He stumbled, thinking he might be on his knees, but not sure. He thought he heard his dad bang on the door again but couldn't be sure, couldn't tell what was real, couldn't find his voice to call for help.

He let himself sink forward, curled up with his arms over his head and prayed to anyone who might be out there that it would stop.

***

**Now:**

It's dark by the time Brian gets sent home. He sits in the parking lot for ten minutes trying to work out whether he needs to call a cab, but he's always been too independent for his own good so he puts the car in drive and ignores the pain in his arm when he goes to shift gears.

His head's throbbing by the time he makes it through the city; the last few miles are nothing but a blurred image of dark road, too-bright headlamps and the screeches of horns that have nothing to do with his driving but keep him on edge anyway.

He staggers out of the car and spends too long patting his pockets for the keys before realising that they're in his hand.

It's three thirty in the morning and nearly everyone's asleep but Brian's filters are all the way down so he still finds himself catching snatches of the neighbourhood. The kid across the road is jerking off, the old lady three houses down is watching infomercials and wondering if she needs _another_ remote-control can opener, and, somewhere in the distance, a baby's screaming while its mom sits in the shower and cries.

Brian shakes his head. He can't care, not tonight. He drags himself to his front door and presses his thumb to the keypad. For the first time ever, he's thankful for NSA-enforced security because he's not sure he could manipulate a door key right now. These days, ninety percent of the time he's fine with having this gift, talent, random mutation thing of his, but right now he's firmly in the other ten percent and just wants to go to sleep.

The front door shuts out more than the night and Brian slumps against it, exhausted and grateful to be home. There's a special lead-alkali glass in the walls that keeps stops other people's thoughts from floating into Brian's house. It's his favourite thing about working for the NSA; he's never slept as well as he does in this house.

He leaves the lights off and sheds his clothes on the way to his bedroom, falling into bed with a tired groan. The sheets are cold and soft, so soft that they only rub seven million of the ten million places where he hurts.

He knows he's going to be in pain tomorrow morning and he should take something now to try and stave it off but he also knows that he isn't going to. To solve this, he shuts off his alarm. There, now he won't be awake for the morning to worry about it.

That's a good thought and it's the one that's with him as he falls asleep.

***

Brian wakes to three things at once: someone pounding on his door, his cell phone ringing and the intruder alarm sirening through the house. It's early, it's really fucking early, he can tell just by the grittiness of his eyes, and he promised himself a really long sleep.

"Fucking what?" he groans at the ceiling and seriously contemplates sticking his head under the pillow and hoping it all goes away.

It doesn't.

Brian sighs, grabs up his phone and heads towards the front door. "Yeah?" he asks, answering it without looking while he stops to pull on the jeans that he left on the floor last night.

"Schechter, what the hell is up with your house?"

It's Bob. He sounds curious, bordering on pissed off.

Brian stops dead as a horrible thought occurs to him.

"Wait, what? Tell me that's not you at my door?" He opens the door before Bob can answer him and yep, there's Bob. Standing on Brian's doorstep. With a grin on his face and a dufflebag at his feet.

Shit.

Brian holds up a hand, closes his phone and turns to disable the alarm.

"Is everything okay, Mr Schechter?" Head of Security Amy asks over the two-way speaker. Bob's thoughts rush together like a giant cartoon question mark.

"Yeah, everything's good," Brian tells her. "Sorry."

He turns away from her recommendation that he have a nice day and puts his hands on his hips. "What have I ever done to make you think I enjoy surprises, Bryar?"

Bob grins at him, shaking his head, and drags himself and his bag into Brian's house.

Damn, that's not good.

In fact, it's bad. Very bad. Brian has nicely defined walls between the various parts of his life; he's not in any hurry to see them come tumbling down.

"I'm just passing through," Bob says, "Don't get your panties in a twist." He breaks off, gaze zeroing in on the bandage around Brian's arm. Brian wonders if there's a way he can stand to make his bruises less visible. He's feels really naked all of a sudden.

"Bob, honestly, I know you want a piece of this, but do you need to stare?" he asks irritably, going for defensive since he doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to say. He backs up towards his bedroom. "Go makes yourself some coffee or something, I've gotta get dressed." Bob lets him go, which is a small blessing .

Once in his bedroom, Brian takes a moment to stand still and mouth _shit_ to himself very, very firmly. This is going to be a disaster. It's been hard enough dodging Bob's calls for that last couple of months and making up crazy stunt school stories when he couldn't avoid talking to him. Pretending he's doing anything but what he really is while Bob's actually staying in his _house_?

Yeah, that's going to be fun.

Brian takes about ten seconds pulling on a long-sleeve t-shirt and his baggiest, softest jeans before he hurries back out of the bedroom to the kitchen. It's not like he leaves issues of _Telepaths' Monthly_ and _NSA Minions' Union_ newsletters out on his counters, but he's still antsy.

He finds Bob standing in front of the toaster, a mug of coffee in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. Brian doesn't remember the last time he bought bread so god knows where and how Bob found it.

"Fair warning," he says, "That bread may be sentient."

"Yeah, we had a nice chat," Bob tells him without turning around. He sniffs the bread, makes a face and drops it back down on the counter. "Eh, I'm not that hungry anyway."

"There's Pop Tarts in that cupboard there," Brian tells him because he may be hard on his bread, but he appreciates pastry for breakfast. And he may not be dancing a jig at the thought of Bob being here, but it's hardwired into him to feed his artists, even when they're not his artists any more.

Brian pours himself a cup of coffee while Bob's burning the Pop Tarts, and then they both sit and eat in near silence, just the occasional _so_ and _yeah_ and _hi_. It's always easy to be quiet with Bob, but this time Brian can tell that Bob's not so much being quiet as biding his time.

"So," Bob says eventually, pushing his plate away.

"Yeah?" Brian asks. He wants another cup of coffee but he knows Bob won't let him walk away from this conversation.

"So, when did you move into the house from Eureka?" is not actually what Brian expected Bob to say, he was expecting it to be more the _why the fuck haven't you called me, you asshole?_ or the _you're hurt, what have you done to yourself?_ that Brian can hear hammering around in Bob's brain but no, of course, Bob's not going to admit to worrying. That's not how they roll.

"I know, right?" Brian says, trying for casual. "It's pretty sweet, huh?"

"Did they make you Queen of England or something?" Bob asks. "No one else needs that much security."

Brian raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, Bryar, that's it. The crown's in my purse and the corgis are in the back yard."

Bob just looks at him. "You're not nearly as funny as you think you are," he says.

Brian would love to tell Bob that he's wrong, that the inside of Bob's head is smiling, but unfortunately that wouldn't do much for Brian's campaign to never, ever let people from his old life know about the telepathy.

"Actually, I married an oil baron," he jokes instead. "We didn't want to tell anyone, his family won't approve."

Bob snorts. "Right. I can see you as the next Sue Ellen Ewing." He smirks suddenly. "No, wait, I got it. You're the fourth Jonas Brother, right?"

"I think there's already a fourth Jonas Brother," Brian says absently then groans when Bob's eyes light up and he starts laughing.

"The fact that you know that is weirder than your creepy talking house, dude," he says when he's finally finished snickering at Brian.

Brian rolls his eyes and bites his lip because he is not amused, totally not. "Seriously, it's no big deal. It's just the guys I work for," he says which is true, at least. "And no, it's not the mob."

"I wasn't thinking mob," Bob tells him, which is a lie. "It's just, dude, I tried to open your porch and a disembodied voice told me to enter the door code in ten seconds or die."

Yeah, they're subtle like that, the NSA.

"She didn't say 'or die'," Brian scoffs, hoping he's right.

Bob folds his arms. "It was implied."

Brian can't help it, he starts smiling.

Damn it, he's missed Bob. He nudges Bob's knee with his heel. "It's just the studio being overprotective," he promises (lies). "I'm a valuable, stunt-jumping asset these days, remember. Don't worry about it. Dude, how are you?"

Bob's not convinced, that much would be obvious even without telepathy, but he apparently decides to let it go for now. "I'm good," he says then nods slowly, like he's thinking about it. "Yeah, I'm great."

Brian's glad and, yeah, maybe a little bit smug. It had taken a metaphorical stick of dynamite and a literal kick in the pants to get Bob out of the soundbooth and on tour, but Brian had known it'd be worth it.

"What have you done with Stump?" Brian asks. He tries to sound casual like he's pleased Bob's been touring with his friend. (It doesn't work, he doesn't sound casual, which is stupid because Brian _is_ pleased that Patrick came along and noticed Bob and the talent that Brian had known about for _years_.)

If Patrick wasn't also someone Bob had spent three months shacked up with and crazy about, Brian would be way better at sounding casual.

Bob grins. "He's good, I left him in LA visiting the Wentz-spawn."

Brian rolls his eyes. Of course that's where Patrick is. Brian's never seen a more amicable split than Fall Out Boy's.

"You seeing him again?" Casual, casual, Brian's so fucking casual, he should get a medal for it.

"Dude," Bob says, which isn't an answer. Obviously, Brian could rummage around in Bob's head and find the answer for himself, but he doesn't do that when anything less than someone's life is at stake (mostly) and he sure as hell doesn't do it to his friends (ever). He can't help hearing surface thoughts, but the deeper ones he tries to let stay private.

"_Dude_," Brian mimics.

Bob flips him off. "Jesus, Schechter, no, I'm not dating Patrick again."

Now Bob's looking at him curiously and he's wondering why Brian is asking. It's kind of awkward because it's not like Brian can admit why it matters to him.

After a few more excruciatingly long seconds, Brian sits back and Bob clears his throat and, okay.

"Are you planning to stay?" Brian asks, which is maybe not as much of a conversational shift as it should have been.

Bob shrugs. "If your house doesn't mind," he says, looking toward the front door doubtfully.

"Seriously, it's just a security thing on the door," Brian promises him, "There's nothing weird inside." Well, sometimes his bedside radio interrupts its regularly scheduled programming to tell him that the world's about to end and he better get his ass down to NSA headquarters pretty damn fast. He doesn't think Bob will ever need to know that though.

Bob doesn't ask if Brian minds him crashing and there's no question of Brian telling him to get a motel, even though that would make Brian's life so much easier. Bob's come to him and Brian hasn't seen him for months, not since Brian bailed on that last tour to go get clean.

"Spare room's down the hall," Brian tells him. When Bob doesn't move, Brian rolls his eyes. "I'll show you. I promise there are no boogiemen in the closet."

"It's not boogiemen I'm worried about," Bob tells him, _still_ looking dubious, but he lets Brian lead him down the hall to the spare room. Brian subtly shifts a potted plant in front of the hidden camera in the hallway that both he and the NSA pretend he doesn't know about.

Once he's got Bob settled and unpacking his shit in the spare room, Brian takes his cell phone into the bathroom, turns on the shower and calls Gabe Saporta.

"Are you calling me from the shower?" Gabe asks, sounding hopeful.

"Yeah," Brian tells him, "I'm all wet and soapy."

Gabe coughs out a laugh. "How can I help you?" he asks and Brian guesses it is a bit unusual for him to be the one calling. Normally he avoids contacting the NSA as much as he can outside of work-related situations.

Really, there's no way for Brian to pretend this is a professional call, so he just stops trying. "I just wanted to see how Charlie was getting on?"

"Charlie?" Gabe asks, which doesn't fill Brian with confidence. "Oh, the little kid. Yeah, he's okay. Victoria took him back to her place last night."

Brian grins. "Of course she did. Anything from the guy we caught?"

"Nah," Gabe tells him, sounding tired. "The doctors haven't cleared him for questioning yet, you really did a number on him. Fingerprints say he's Spencer Smith, exemplary student at the University of Nevada, econ major, president of the GSA on campus. It makes no fucking sense how he'd end up working for kidnappers, dude."

Brian snorts. "You and I both know that was way more than kidnapping. They were experimenting on that kid."

Gabe sighs. "When they let Victoria at him, she'll get the whole story out of him. Unless you want to swing by...?" He lets the offer hang and, if Bob weren't here, Brian might be tempted. He hates interrogations, but he also hates waiting. Plus he really wants answers for Charlie.

"No, look, I'm going to be off the radar for a few days. I've got a friend staying." What he's really saying is please, please don't make me have to look like a freak in front of Bob.

"Yeah, sure," Gabe says easily, "I mean, I'll try. Wouldn't want to interrupt your bootycall, right?"

"That's _not_ what it is," Brian splutters. Talk about hitting close to the mark.

Gabe just laughs and hangs up on him and Brian's left to actually try to take a shower. His bruises look amazing in the harsh bathroom light, bright blooms of colour exploding across every knobbly part of him. He probably wouldn't look any more banged up if he actually _were_ training to be a stuntman like everyone thinks.

***

**Then:**

After what people liked to call his 'breakdown', Brian spent four months being passed around state run psychiatric wards, doctors arguing over him and no one able to agree on what was wrong with him. Then his dad discovered that he did have a conscience and paid for him to move to a place called Walton House, a private hospital with a good reputation.

Brian's dad had always thought that throwing money at problems would fix them.

Mostly, people didn't bother with him at Walton, so at first, the shuffle of feet in Brian's peripheral vision didn't register. He was used to being ignored, left alone in the corner. He was quiet so the orderlies mostly left him alone.

"Brian," said a voice. It was Dr Norton, the only one of the dozen people who'd looked into Brian's case who'd ever made an effort to treat him like he was still a real person.

Brian looked up. Dr Norton was flanked by two guys in sharp suits, but Norton had his hands pushed nonchalantly in his pockets so Brian took his cue from him and didn't worry.

"These guys want to talk to you." Norton said. He leaned forward conspiratorially. Reluctantly, Brian shifted his headphones off his ears enough to hear Norton say, "You don't want to talk to them anymore, you yell for me, okay?" He patted Brian's shoulder before straightening up and walking away.

One of the guys knelt down in front of Brian, put his hands on the arms of Brian's chair. Brian closed his eyes and ignored him. Brian had always met everyone's eyes before, but it had been easy to give that up for some tiny pretense of sanity.

"Hey, Brian," the guy said. Brian thumbed the curved side of his discman, turning up the volume up. He'd found that the only way to block out the voices completely was music, counting the beat, not letting himself think past the music.

The guy reached out and tugged on the discman and Brian's eyes flew open. He grabbed it back, holding it to his chest. Yeah, no fucking way was anyone touching that. Even the doctors had learned not to try to take away his music.

"Dude," the guy said, pitching his voice to be heard. Brian turned up the volume again.

He squinted at the guy. Tall and tanned, nicely suited, he didn't actually look that much older than Brian. Maybe he wasn't a doctor, maybe he was an intern. They were even worse.

While Brian watched, the guy held up his hands, like he was trying to show Brian he wasn't a threat. Except, no, that wasn't what he was doing. He was showing Brian that his hands were empty. He reached up and twitched the headphones off Brian's head.

Brian hit out instinctively but the guy was too fast, mega fast actually. An intern with ninja training. Awesome.

"Hi, Brian, I'm Gabe," he said. He had a soft accent. Brian had just enough time to register that before his brain lost the beat he'd been desperately trying to cling to and the voices came rushing back in.

They were bad today, they were always bad here: screaming, crying, nonsense words with no rhyme or pattern.

"Hey, hey," said the guy - Gabe. He grabbed Brian's hands and hey, no. Brian wasn't keen on unauthorised touching. He was about to pull his hands away when Gabe said, "Concentrate on me."

Brian frowned. Concentrate on-? Fuck. He jerked helplessly, trying to hunch his shoulders up to his ears, like that would do any good.

"On me," Gabe said again. "Look at me, concentrate on me, don't listen to anyone else."

"I don't know what you mean," Brian told him, hating that he sounded confused. Seriously, he _hated_ that. Gabe just kept looking at him with his big, creepy brown eyes and then Brian noticed it. There was something like... He could describe it. It was something like silence, right in the middle of all the voices.

Automatically, Brian latched on to it, following it with his mind until the silence got louder and the voices got quieter. The silence was such a shock, it was like someone had thrown a glass of cold water in his face.

_Hi,_ said someone into the silence. Brian couldn't remember the last time there was just silence. _That's better, isn't it?_

Brian looked at Gabe, but he shook his head. He tipped his chin to the man kneeling next to him. He was also wearing a suit but his hair was a messy mass of curls, his stubble scruffy and there were tattoos poking out from under his sleeves. Brian started to reassess his assumption that they were doctors.

Not that he cared what they were right now. They'd made it quiet.

_We're not doctors. I'm Travis. This is Gabe. We're with an organisation called the NSA._

The other guy - Travis - his lips definitely weren't moving. That was bad. Before he'd come here, Brian had almost believed that the voices meant he was reading people's thoughts. The doctors here had convinced him that was bullshit; he was just sick.

_You're not sick._ Could voices in his head sound angry? Because that one did.

"I am," he tried saying. Travis didn't look confused, like Brian was answering something that he hadn't really said.

_Think of a number, any number._ Travis grinned, revealing a truly badass grill. _Make it long._

Brian rolled his eyes; great, these guys had interrupted his nice, quiet mental breakdown to play magic tricks? Still, his mind automatically came up with a number anyway.

_Lame_, Travis said (said? Thought? Brian was so fucking out of his depth here). _That's your mom's birthday_.

Woah. Brian sat back abruptly, wrenching on Gabe's grip on his wrist but not managing to pull away. "That's just freaky."

"Nah." Travis' lips moved this time. It was way less disconcerting. "It's just telepathy."

Brian shook his head. "I'm not," he said, waving a hand. "That." He'd thought he was, maybe, but he wasn't.

"_Dude_," Travis said, making a little tsk noise like Brian had hurt his feelings. "What the fuck d'you think we were doing just then? I wasn't talking to myself, you know. And neither were you."

"But." Brian opened and closed his mouth. "That's not--" Brian believed in a lot of shit, okay. His mind was open to pretty much anything ever, but the chances that he and this dude he'd never met had been fucking... _mindmelding_. No.

"Hey." That was Gabe. Brian had almost forgotten he was there. "If you're schizophrenic, or whatever they think you are this week, then you'll have to stay here 'til they find the drugs that work right for you. If you're telepathic, you can leave with us right now." He beamed a shit-eating grin. These dudes were way too happy; it was weird. "Which is it gonna be, kid?"

Brian looked at him for a long time. Gabe looked back at him, all open expression and relaxed shoulders. Travis at least looked a little bit more sympathetic. No less determined, but more sympathetic.

"Come on," Gabe said quietly. His hand was still around Brian's wrist. "Don't tell me you like it here."

Brian shook his head and tried not to think about his mom visiting every second Saturday, how Ewan used to visit when he could but hadn't been here for months. How he could concentrate on less and less of what they said every time and how his dad never visited at all.

He'd been here nine months and there were weeks he didn't remember.

"Fuck it," Brian said, uncurling his legs. They were stiff from how long he'd been sitting here. "I'll go with you."

***

**Now:**

By the time Brian's clean and dressed, Bob's apparently overcome his distrust of the house enough to turn on the TV. He clicks it off when Brian walks into the living room, though, looking expectant.

Yeah, it's been so long since Brian had company, he has no idea what to do now.

In the end, they end up taking Brian's car to his favourite diner. If Brian remembers anything about the days following a tour, it's how fucking hungry he used to get. It's not that you don't get fed on tour, it's just that tour food is always the same. Toward the end, real food is all anyone ever fantasises about. That and a ten-hour shower.

Bob looks curiously around at Brian's neighbourhood, taking in the fancy-ass houses a couple of blocks down from Brian's only _slightly_ fancy-ass house and whistles. "Dude, d'you win the lottery?"

Brian raises his eyebrows, hopes Bob's looking to see. "Nah, got myself a sugar daddy."

"Right," Bob scoffs, "He must be desperate."

Brian picks the first thing he can find out of the glovebox and chucks it at Bob's head. That turns out to be a mistake when Bob makes a startled noise and swears.

"Jesus, fuck, Schechter," he says, "Is this blood?"

Oops.

Brian pulls up to a convenient stoplight and glances over at Bob, who is holding Brian's Gunslinger t-shirt, the one that got doused in blood last night. He'd been wondering where he left that.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he says, grabbing it back and throwing it over his shoulder into the back of the car. "Had a nosebleed." That was even kind of true. If you skipped the part where his nose had bled because a crazy ninja woman had punched him in it.

"A nosebleed?" Bob repeats doubtfully. "That looked more like something the CSI dudes should be taking into evidence." He's trying to sound flippant but it really isn't working, especially since Brian can hear him thinking _don't freak out, don't jump to conclusions. Shit_.

"Oh hey, look, we're here," Brian announces, swinging into the diner's parking lot and shutting down the conversation as hard as he can.

Brian's favourite waitress is serving today. Her name is Jennie, she's twenty-seven, she has an older girlfriend who has twin babies from a previous relationship and she really likes her job. Only those first and last facts are things she's actually told Brian out loud.

"Hey, Brian," she says, grinning at him then raising her eyebrows really unsubtly in Bob's direction. Yeah, Brian comes here too much.

"Morning. This is Bob."

Jennie waves her notebook in Bob's direction. "Hey, Bob. Just passing through?"

Bob shrugs. "Maybe," he says and wait, what, since when is this not a flying visit?

Jennie hums. "We got some pretty nice scenery around here," she says and she's looking meaningfully at Brian while she says it.

Jesus fucking Christ, Brian's _waitress_ is trying to set him up with Bob. Brian would tell her not to bother; he's already resigned himself to that ship having sailed.

By the time Jennie saunters away, Bob's pretty much failing to hide his smirk.

"What?" Brian snaps, unimpressed by the knowing glint in Bob's eye.

"It's cute," Bob tells him, "You made a friend."

"Oh fuck you, I have plenty of friends."

"Hm," Bob agrees. His smile fades until he's staring at Brian with big, blue, worried eyes. Brian _hates_ when he does that.

Bob wants to ask about the blood on the t-shirt and he wants to ask about the bruises on Brian's body, but Brian can't let that happen. There's only so many lies he's okay with telling.

Luckily, the NSA put him through insanely expensive training for just this sort of shit.

"Man, it's so good to have a day off," he says, letting himself sag a little, taking the pressure off some of his biggest bruises. "You would not believe the shit they've had me doing this week. I jumped out of a goddamn hot air balloon the other day, seriously."

Bob's thoughts don't exactly get less worried, but they get more assessing. Like he's prepared to entertain another possibility other than, oh Jesus. Apparently Bob was worried he's gotten himself an asshole boyfriend or maybe an asshole dealer.

Awesome.

"Hot air balloon?" Bob asks curiously, so Brian concentrates on that. It's easy to make up a story to amuse Bob with; he has actually jumped out of a balloon. He's not stupid enough to have cover stories that he can't talk convincingly about.

"Jeez," Bob says when Brian's finished, even lifting the hem of his shirt a little to reveal a bruise. "I hope they're paying you really fucking well." He's still worried but it's a different kind of worry, an amused kind of offhand worry, the kind you feel for a friend who spends his time jumping onto and out of burning things but who always lives to freak you out with the stories afterwards.

Brian's pleased Bob's no longer suspicious but he still feels like an asshole. Stupid fucking NSA making him lie to the guy who's basically his best friend.

Jennie brings their food and, thankfully, someone else comes in before she can humiliate Brian all over again. Brian glances over at the table she moves onto and automatically scans the surface thoughts of the new customers. It's instinct, just like skimming your eyes over someone or listening in on a loud conversation, but woah, Brian wishes he hadn't bothered. Dude is not having a good day.

"Schechter?" Bob asks and Brian jumps.

"Dude, sorry, did you say something?"

Bob just shakes his head and starts attacking his pancakes. "Boring you already?" he asks around a massive mouthful.

"That and grossing me out," Brian tells him, then take a bigger bite himself.

They eat in mostly silence, which isn't unusual. Brian's always been able to be quiet with Bob. Even Bob's thoughts are quieter than most people's. A lot of people's thoughts jump all over the place, and it's completely fucking exhausting, but Bob's pretty much always calm. It's like standing on an empty beach at night or some poetic shit like that.

Sadly, the same can't be said for the depressed dude who came in before. His thoughts are a dark, muddled mess and it's grating on Brian's calm.

By the time they're on their third coffees, Brian's not sure he can take it any more.

"Want to get out of here?" he asks, abruptly.

"Sure," Bob says slowly, looking surprised. He drops some bills onto the table top even though Brian's already paid the check and left a tip and follows Brian to the door.

In the doorway, Brian stops, curses, and crosses back to the counter, leaning over to slip Jennie five bucks. "A slice of pie for my friend over there," he says, jerking his thumb at Depressed Guy's booth.

Depressed Guy gives him a surprised look. Brian shrugs and smiles. Depressed Guy smiles uncertainly back. Brian has no idea if it'll help, but he's really bad at doing nothing at all.

"What was that about?" Bob asks when Brian rejoins him for the walk to the car.

Brian shrugs. "Nothing," he said. "Spreading some good karma."

"I'm not sure you _spread_ karma," Bob muses but he bumps Brian's shoulder and Brian knows he approves even if he doesn't understand.

***

It feels good to spend a day with Bob again, even if Brian would have preferred a little warning beforehand. There's something about Bob that's helplessly calming; there always has been.

Bob insists on a tour of Brian's neighbourhood after lunch, which is all kinds of awkward, because Brian has lived here nearly a year but all the work he's been doing for the NSA has really gotten in the way of exploring.

Still, he manages to bullshit his way through a general history of the area and if Bob knows he's talking out of his ass, he hides it well.

"Where does that go?" Bob asks, pointing to the gated off side road that leads to the NSA building. It's guarded by two big dudes with sidearms fastened to each him and, Brian knows, at least three other guns each that he can't see. The NSA is nothing if not subtle. "Woah, what does having the Men in Black down the road do to your insurance excess?"

"Yeah, last time Will Smith crashed a spaceship on my roof was really hell on the guttering," Brian says, hoping he sounds normal. It's kind of hard to banter while internally calling himself an idiot for bringing Bob past this place.

The guards at the gates are professionals, it's not like they're suddenly going to give Brian a cheery wave and ask how his mom's doing. Still, Brian doesn't relax until the gates have shrunk to a dot in the rearview mirror and Bob's moved on to telling him some story about Patrick, Pete Wentz and an orange mascot costume.

***

They get home in time to catch a hockey game between two minor teams that Brian has barely heard of. Still, hockey is hockey and Brian takes it as a sign that the universe thinks he deserves a night in front of the TV.

Brian takes the armchair while Bob sprawls out on the sofa, and they waste the evening trashtalking teams that they actually don't give a shit about.

It might be dumb, but it's the way of men, and who's Brian to argue with that?

"Well," Bob says when even the post-game commentary is over and Brian's turned off the TV. It's suddenly really quiet in his living room.

"Your team sucks, Bryar," Brian tells him, even though it feels forced and awkward now, not easy like it was a minute ago.

At some point when he got up for more soda, he accidentally sat down on the sofa with Bob rather than back in his own chair. It hadn't felt like a big deal then. Now Bob's really close. Really close, really warm, and really-- Fuck.

Bob's thinking about kissing Brian. He's thinking about leaning in and pressing his mouth to Brian's. He's thinking that Brian might let him.

Brian sits back so quickly that he almost ends up on the floor. It's not exactly a surprise, because it's not exactly the first time Bob's thought it. It's the first time in a long time though, since before Bob hooked up with Patrick, and Brian hadn't been expecting it at all.

"I should." He stumbles over the words and he hates that, hates sounding anything less than totally sure of himself. "Long day," he tries instead. "I'm going to head to bed. You got everything you need?"

Bob's looking at him like he doesn't quite understand the words.

Disappointed, Bob's disappointed. Brian hates that he did that. He tells himself that it's better than leading Bob on though, because Brian doesn't date; there's no way for him to have sex with someone and keep out of their head, and the idea of doing that to someone without them knowing makes him feel dirty as hell.

"No, I don't need anything," Bob answers slowly .

Brian nods and he doesn't run but he does _stride with purpose_ out of the room. He locks his bedroom door behind himself.

Fuck, he thinks angrily, slamming his open palm into the wall. It hurts like fuck and he's glad he didn't try it with a fist.

***

**Then:**

It had been a long day and Brian's head was pounding; all the kids in the club were screaming and thinking too loud tonight. He liked teenagers, really, he did, but he wished they would tone down their angst some.

Travis and the NSA had taught him pretty much all he needed to know to live a regular life, but tour life wasn't really regular.

He pushed out the back of the club and fumbled his smokes out of his pocket. It was quiet out here, thank god.

"Gonna share?" someone asked and Brian jumped out of his fucking _skin_ because it was so quiet out here that he'd thought he was alone.

"Yeah, sure," he said slowly, shaking the packet and holding it out.

The guy stepped out of the shadows and took a cigarette. He was big and blond, wrapped up in a heavy black sweatshirt. "Thanks," he said, pulling out a cigarette.

Brian stepped forward and lit it without thinking. He could sense the guy's thoughts now, but they were still so quiet, nothing like the frenetic buzz he'd almost started to think was normal after nine weeks on the road with hopped up, fucked up, overly excitable musicians.

"I'm Brian," he offered once he'd stepped back. He wanted to lean in and just soak up this guy's quiet but wow, would that be creepy.

The guy nodded his head. "Yeah, I know. You brought that crowd through here." He smiled a little to show he didn't mind. "I'm Bob. I work here."

"Cool," Brian said, because House of Blues was pretty fucking cool. "Haven't seen you around." Then he winced, because Bob was kind of hot and that had sounded a lot like _do you come here often?_

Bob just smiled slightly. He leaned back against the wall, smoking slowly. He didn't say anything else, so neither did Brian.

The club's soundproofing was pretty good but, this close, Brian could still hear a muted version of the band screaming on stage and the crowd screaming in the pit. He hummed softly under his breath.

After a while, Brian realised that Bob was counting the beat in his head, wincing slightly when Jaeson and Chris went off rhythm.

"You drum?" Brian asked casually when he saw that Bob's fingers were twitching against the brickwork, giving him an excuse for asking the question he already knew the answer to.

Bob threw his cigarette butt down on the floor and ground it out with his heel. "Kind of," he said. "Your boys are good."

Brian shrugged and offered the packet again. It was possible he was trying to get Bob to stay out here with him, which wasn't his fault; Bob had a calming brain, okay.

"Sure, they're good," he said. They were, he was proud of them.

Bob shook his head. "Dude, try to sound like you have a little faith in your band."

Brian looked up, surprised. Then he saw that Bob was smiling at him, just a soft, half-smile but still: he was teasing him.

Brian couldn't help it, he rolled his eyes, laughing. No one was ever this easy with him, especially after just ten minutes and two cigarettes.

Brian folded his arms. "_Dude_," he mimicked. "I have plenty of faith in my band. How could I not? They have me."

Bob huffed out a laugh and flicked a little bit of ash off the top of his cigarette. In the dim light, Brian could see that the very tops of his cheeks were pink.

_Shit, are we flirting?_ Bob was thinking and oh, right, fuck, maybe they were.

"I guess I should get back in," Brian said, straightening up. He could call himself a coward later, he decided.

Bob nodded easily. If Brian hadn't been able to read his thoughts, he would never have guessed he was disappointed. Which, wow, that was kind of flattering. "Maybe I'll see you next time you come through."

Brian couldn't help it; he knew he shouldn't, because he didn't hook up and it was shitty to lead people on. Still, "Maybe," he said anyway and smiled over his shoulder.

***

**Now:**

Brian's getting used to being woken by his phone hours before he's ready to get up.

This time it's still dark, and that's never good. "Yeah?" he manages through a dry, middle-of-the-fucking-night throat.

"Schechter." It's Gabe. He sounds tense, grave and pissed and that's enough to get Brian to wake up because Gabe's never serious, even when serious should be the only option.

"Thought you weren't going to need me," Brian says on autopilot.

"Someone broke into Victoria's apartment," Gabe says flatly, ignoring him. "They knocked her out and took the kid."

"What?" Brian's on his feet. "Holy fuck, Saporta, what the hell? How could that happen?" Victoria's place has even more security that Brian's and, anyway, he's never known her not to be able to take care of herself. He doesn't think about Charlie, tiny, bruised Charlie who they just fucking _rescued_.

"We need you to get your ass down here right now," Gabe interrupts, ignoring him, "Victoria's got a concussion and she's too busy puking to help and we need a telepath."

"On my way," Brian tells him and ends the call.

It takes him ninety seconds to get ready to leave, which isn't long but feels like it's way too slow. He grabs his emergency bag from the hall closet and is picking his keys out of the dish by the door when a voice stops him.

"Brian?" Bob asks.

Brian manages not to swear before spinning around. Bob's standing at the end of the hall, looking sleep-rumpled and confused. "What's going on?"

Shit. "Nothing," Brian lies. "I've just got to go out for a minute. Seriously, go back to sleep."

"You've got to go out?" Bob repeats. "It's the middle of the night." He's finally woken up enough to remember why he's worried and Brian knows he shouldn't get irritated, but he does.

"Fuck's sake, I'm not sneaking out to score," he snaps, shrugging on his jacket.

"I never thought you were," Bob retorts and it's totally not true but Brian doesn't have time to argue right now.

"Yeah," Brian says, sagging back against the wall and rubbing a hand through his hair. He's tired; he wants to be in bed; he wants to be in _Bob's_ bed. He shakes his head against that particular pity party. "Sorry, man," he says, meaning it. "Getting called out in the middle of the night makes me grumpy, you know?"

"They seriously expect you to do stunts at three in the fucking a.m.?" Bob asks doubtfully.

Brian looks away. "Night shoot," he lies with a shrug, "The dude they were using got himself a concussion so they need me to fill in."

"That's fucked up." Bob gives him a smile that isn't a smile and walks with him to the front door. "Take care out there, yeah? Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

His hand is warm on the small of Brian's back. Brian will take what he can get. "Bryar, I'm not even going to do half the stuff you _would_ do," he promises. He hears Bob laughing before the front door closes between them.

***

The NSA building is always busy, even in the middle of the night. When Brian arrives, it's even busier than normal. Harassed people with uncombed hair and rumpled suits are running this way and that, looking like they shouldn't be anywhere but in bed and definitely not at work.

Brian ignores everyone, skidding into the first elevator that arrives and smacking his knuckles against the glass wall the whole ride down to the medlab.

Gabe is pacing back and forth outside a curtained off corner so Brian heads that way.

"Agent Schechter," a woman in a white coat tries to intercept him. "You need to get your stitches checked."

Brian waves her off. His arm feels fine; the bullet only grazed him. It's not like it went through or anything. Anyway, he hates being called 'agent'.

"Gabe, what the fuck?" Brian asks as soon as he's within shouting distance. "How did someone get in? Did you seriously send Charlie off without any guards?"

"Yeah, there were guards," Gabe snaps. "Of course there were fucking guards. They're _dead_. Victoria's lucky she only has a concussion."

That pulls Brian up a little. "And Charlie?" Shit. _Shit_. Brian promised him he'd be safe.

Gabe just shrugs.  Somehow, seeing him at a loss makes Brian feel even worse.

"Did you get anything out of the guy from the warehouse?" Brian waves his hand, he totally remembers the guy's name. "Smith?"

"Yeah," Gabe says, "And no. Turns out he knows how to shield. Becket's been working on him tonight and Victoria'll have another go tomorrow. Or, I guess maybe you're going to have to now?"

"Yeah," Brian agrees immediately. He's okay with blowing off work to hang with Bob but not when Charlie's missing.

Before Brian can say anything else, the curtain twitches back and a doctor sticks her head out.  "Agents? You can come in."

Behind the curtain, Victoria is sitting on a gurney, gauze taped over her left temple. She looks grey and dazed but her jaw is set; she's pissed.

"How the fuck did they get the jump on you?" Brian's pissed too. He's not blaming her, not really, he just hates the cases that involve kids and he hates that they had Charlie safe and then they lost him.

Victoria's slow to answer so he dips inside her brain. That's such a mistake. Her thoughts are a dizzy, concussed mess and he jumps back, physically and metaphorically. He feels nauseous.

Victoria makes a face at him. "Yes," she says dryly, "Try being me right now."

"Sorry," Brian says, chagrinned. It's pretty fucking rude to go rifling around in someone's head. "Just."

Victoria wrinkles her nose. "Yes, I know," she says. She rubs the purpling skin at the edge of the bandage and makes a face. "I didn't hear anything. I didn't know anything was wrong until I woke up on the floor."

Shit, Brian thinks. That's bad. That shouldn't even be possible. He can't remember the last time he didn't know where everyone was in a room with him. "Their shielding must be perfect," he says, thoughtful and appalled.

Victoria nods slowly. She winces. "Yes. But not just their shielding. They got the jump on Angie and Kris too." At Brian's frown, she clarifies, "The guards on the door."

Brian sits down next to her on the gurney. He's aware that Gabe's watching them, but ignores him for now. "The woman at the house where I found Charlie was pretty fucking ninja." He makes a face at himself, remembering. "And she can shield."

Victoria rubs at her head again and Brian feels bad for bugging her. This is important though. Before he can press her to think harder, Gabe's hand lands on his shoulder.

But, "Guys," Victoria says slowly. "I just thought. I was going to call it in, but then I got hit. Charlie was having dreams about this house, on the lakeshore. I think maybe they kept him there before the warehouse."

Gabe beams at her, wide enough that Brian's instantly out of place and uncomfortable. "That's real helpful." He bounces on his toes. "I'll send someone down to get details if you're feeling up to it?"

Victoria rolls her eyes. "I have a headache and I may barf on them but I can describe a house, Gabe, stop fussing."

Gabe sighs, like he's a frustrated Don Quixote. "Come on, dude. Vicky-T needs her rest and you and me, we're going to go get ourselves a task force."

"Task force?" Brian asks, raising his eyebrows.

Gabe snaps his fingers at Brian. "Damn right, baby. Victoria, my love, take care." He grabs her hand and kisses the back elaborately.

She flips him off, but she's smiling.

***

**Then:**

Bob and Patrick's first video as an actual established band on an actual established label (yeah, Brian was really fucking proud, so what?) was one of those predictable ones with dramatic camera angles and burning barrels of god knows what all around them.

It wasn't ideal, but it was all they could afford and with a little bit of luck, it would work. Patrick had enough left-over interest from his days in Fall Out Boy to sustain them through their first single and, after that, well. They were damn good, they'd carry themselves.

Brian wasn't at the shoot because he had a fuckload of work to do and, anyway, having your manager hanging around while you shot your first video was like having your mom around while you kissed your first boy; it just wasn't cool.

He was elbow-deep in paperwork when he started to feel weird, antsy and uncomfortable like the air was too thick and his skin was too thin. It was a strange feeling but he was maybe a _little_ hungover from the beers he'd had last night when he couldn't sleep, so he put it down to that.

Brian took another slurp of coffee, wondered briefly when he'd put a shot in it then shrugged,

Hair of the dog, probably a good idea.

He opened a new email when it pinged into his inbox and rolled his eyes when he saw it was from Pete Wentz. Instructions on the care and feeding of Patrick Stump needed to go to Bob not Brian; Bob was the one who was schtupping him.

Brian moved his fingers on the mousepad, intending to forward the whole thing to Bob, but his hand spasmed over the keyboard, his palm smacking the keys and creating an infinity of Ts.

He pushed away from the desk and shook his head. Jeez, he did not feel good.

Rubbing his temples, he tried to decide if he was having some kind of seizure. He felt dizzy but not dizzy at the same time, like only one point inside his head was spinning.

Fresh air, he decided, fresh air was the way to go. He ignored the way his hands shook when he opened the door leading to the balcony and leaned carefully against the railing.

It was the middle of the day but since no one walked anywhere in LA, it was pretty peaceful. By which Brian meant peaceful for _him_; the kind of peace where everyone's thoughts were locked up in the bubbles of their cars, not floating around free on the sidewalk.

But the fresh air wasn't helping at all and he was starting to feel kind of nauseous. He fumbled out a cigarette because they always helped with hangovers. His fingers jittered embarrassingly on the lighter and his thumb skidded across hot metal and right into the flame.

Brian's thoughts jolted like he'd woken up fast after tripping in a dream. He could see fire, feel his palms turn sweaty and hot, sickly pain rolling up his legs and a thought pattern that he knew as well as he knew his own.

Just like that, his cellphone was in his hand and he was yelling at the set director before she'd finished answering the phone.

"Shut down the shoot, check on Bob," Brian told her over and over until it penetrated.

"Schechter? What?" Tara asked, but Brian didn't shut up until he heard her yell cut.

Brian held his breath. Maybe he was wrong. His telepathy didn't normally cross the stream into empathy and, anyway, Bob was all the way across town.

The hope lasted just long enough for Tara to come back to the phone and say, "Brian, get here now," low and insistent before she hung up on him.

Brian broke every traffic law ever on his race through the city, down to the docks where they'd been filming. There was already an ambulance outside the warehouse and he didn't realise he'd forgotten to put on shoes until he was racing across the gravel to the open, corrugated steel door.

The first thing he saw was a huddle of techs and PAs and Tara who was pale and angry in the middle. He ignored them all until he found Bob, lying on his back on the stage, two EMTs working on his leg and Patrick sitting at his head, talking urgently to him.

Brian's breath hitched, stuck between relief that he'd been able to stop anything worse happening and panic because Bob was clearly hurt.

He dipped into Bob's head for a second, got an impression of mingled pain, embarrassment and stoic determination not to make a fuss. The pain was dominant and he had to pull out before he puked.

"Schechter?" It was Tara. She followed where he was looking. "He's got second degree burns on his leg. Stubborn asshole thought he could wail 'til we'd finished to tell anyone." She frowned hard at Brian, dark eyebrows drawn together. "Want to tell me how the _fuck_ you knew something was wrong?"

Brian managed to tear his eyes away from Bob because, shit. This was probably something he should pay attention to. He opened his mouth, hoping a lie would just appear.

It didn't.

"I told him," a voice piped up from just behind them. Brian swung around to look, wondering who would lie for him and if she'd like a pay raise. She was a tall girl, wearing an outsized purple hoodie. The sleeves fell down over her hands and she was tugging at them nervously.

"Who are you?" Tara asked brusquely.

My new guardian angel, Brian thought.

The girl bit her lip. "I work for the company that owns the warehouse? I called Mr Schechter 'cause I thought something was wrong?" She blew red-ish bangs out of her eyes and smiled shyly at them both, bouncing a little bit on her toes.

Tara looked at her then shrugged. "Well, thanks," she said. "Next time, tell _me_, yeah?"

"Yes," the girl breathed and kept smiling until Tara walked away.

"_Thank you_," Brian said as soon as Tara was out of earshot. Of course, now he had to think up a lie for this girl.

The girl's smile dropped off like it had never been there. "You _need_ a guardian angel," she said darkly and turned away.

"Hey, what?" Brian called after her, automatically reaching out to catch her arm, but someone calling his name stopped him.

Patrick was waving to him from the stage. The EMTs were loading Bob onto a board. "Are you going to ride with us to the hospital?"

Brian thought for a second about being trapped in a tiny space with Bob in that much pain and Patrick that freaked out.

"I'll meet you there," he said and waved them on. When he turned to look for her, the girl was gone.

***

By the time Brian reached the hospital, the door to Bob's room was firmly closed and Patrick was sitting outside, looking miserable on a plastic chair. His head was in his hands, his fingertips tucked under his green trucker hat.

His face was flushed when he looked up at Brian. "Hey," he said and took his jacket off the chair next to his.

Brian really did not want to sit down; hospitals were one of the shittiest places imaginable for a telepath. But he was still Patrick's manager, even if they weren't all that close; Brian couldn't just leave him.

He took the chair beside Patrick's and tried to smile reassuringly while keeping a tight hold on his shields. There were a _lot_ of freaked out people in this hospital.

"Hey."

"Burning skin smells weird," Patrick told him and Brian's head snapped up.

"_Dude_."

Patrick blew out a breath and slid his palm over his face. "Shit. Sorry. I'm kind of inappropriate when I'm freaked." His mouth twisted into an almost-smile. "Something I picked up from Pete."

"Yeah," Brian agreed distractedly. Everything was Wentz's fault; he could get behind that.

Patrick was sitting so close that Brian could feel guilt coming off him in waves. As a manager, Brian knew he should try to reassure him, but as the guy who thought of Bob as his best friend, Brian wanted to know how the _fuck_ you could fail to notice that your drummer was on fire.

"He'll be okay though," Brian said eventually. He felt like he'd know if Bob wasn't.

Patrick nodded. "No one will really tell me anything."

Brian didn't answer. He'd never had a problem getting information out of people, especially when they didn't know they were giving it.

They lapsed into silence. It was pretty awkward. Brian still felt shaky from adrenaline left over from earlier - and he was seriously, seriously curious about what kind of freaky telepathic Bat Signal Bob had sent out - and Patrick was humming to himself softly, the way Brian had learned he did when he needed to calm himself down.

His thoughts were projecting loudly and, normally, Patrick's thought patterns were almost as calming as Bob's - drummers, totally the way to go - but today, right now, Brian could really have done without having to know that Bob and Patrick had argued over breakfast this morning and he _really_ hadn't needed to know that they'd made up - twice - in the shower.

Yeah, okay, it wasn't like Brian didn't know they were fucking but he did not need to see that and he sure as hell didn't need to know how warm and fucking _fuzzy_ Patrick felt about Bob.

It was irrational and stupid because Brian didn't date so he wasn't ever going to date Bob even if Bob hadn't got tired of waiting for him, but Bob was _his_ and, wow. Brian needed to get over himself pretty damn quick or he needed to stop working with Bob and Patrick.

Yeah, those were his options. They were kind of shitty.

He stood up abruptly. "I'm going to get a coffee. You want anything?"

Patrick shook his head. He pulled his hat down further over his forehead and tucked his chin against his chest. Brian didn't stick around.

He didn't really want coffee but he got some anyway. Then he crossed the hall to the restroom and poured it down the sink. Shit, but he hated hospitals. If he relaxed his shields for a second, he could tell that there were four people dying right this minute, seventeen people crying and countless numbers trying not to let on just how terrified they were.

He could not deal with this shit, not on top of the very specific brand of terrified that he was about Bob. He needed something to take the edge off, just until he got out of here. Painkillers were best, the stronger the better. They blotted out the telepathy, made it fuzzy and indistinct and way easier to ignore.

Brian checked his pockets, cursed and checked the extra pocket on the inside of his jacket. They were all empty.

Still, he was in a hospital.

Brian had spent enough time in Walton House to know the general layout of hospitals. He ducked out of the restroom and strode along the corridor like he had every right to be there, walking purposefully along the corridor past private rooms and closets then hooked a quick left to where--

Awesome. The drug dispensary was exactly where he'd expected it to be.

There was a bored-looking kid in scrubs sorting boxes just inside the partition and Brian rapped smartly on the glass. "Keyla Matthews in room 7 needs her meds stat," he told him, with all the fake authority he could muster - and he managed bands who didn't like to listen to anyone; he could muster a lot.

The kid looked at him curiously, but Brian had chosen deliberately from the flashes of life stories he'd picked up as he walked down the corridor. Keyla Matthews was seven years old and everyone loved her. Brian never claimed to be a good person.

"Right," the kid said.

"Dr Harris will meet you there," Brian called after him because he didn't want Keyla accidentally getting overdosed or anything. Plus the kid would be gone longer if he thought he was waiting for someone.

_That was clever_, someone said, projecting right into Brian's mind and he jumped, whirling around.

The girl from the warehouse, the one who'd lied for him, was leaning against the other side of the dispensary. She waved two fingers.

"You," Brian said and started to walk toward her but, shit, he didn't have long. He veered off and ducked behind the counter instead.

_Painkillers or muscle relaxants?_ the girl asked. Apparently shy and sweet had been an act; Brian didn't like her after all all. She did the mental equivalent of tsking at him. _That's rude._

_So is stalking_. Brian's hands landed on a bottle of Vicodin and something gnawing and anxious inside him eased a little.

_Painkillers then. Very House._

_Fuck off._ Brian dry-swallowed two little pills then shoved the bottle in his pocket. He slipped back out of the dispensary and smiled at her benignly. Vicodin was good shit; he was already a little fuzzy around the edges and if she was still projecting to him, he couldn't hear her.

He tapped his ear and ignored when she made a face at him. "Sorry."

"I think Travis preferred codeine," she called after him, voice ringing clearly down the corridor.

Brian turned back to face her. "What?" he asked. "Who _are_ you?" Even without the telepathy, he knew before he'd finished asking. "Fuck, you're NSA."

She winced. Brian didn't give a shit. Secret telepaths working for government agencies were the stuff of conspiracy theorists' wet dreams, but mostly they just pissed Brian off.

The rubber soles on her boots were completely silent as she stalked down the corridor toward him, grabbing his arm and dragging him around a corner into another empty corridor. Apparently the burns unit didn't get a lot of through traffic.

She pushed him up against the wall and loomed over him.

"Sorry, you're really not my type" he said, looking up (yeah, she was a lot taller than him, he was used to it) at her.

"Excuse me while I nurse my broken heart," she snapped. Her fingernails were digging sharply into his bicep. "I want to have a conversation, and I want you to stop shouting about the NSA at the top of your lungs. Can you do that?"

"Yep," Brian agreed because he totally could. Didn't mean he was going to, but he _could_. Her grip on his arm relaxed a little and he brought his forearm up, knocking her hand away.

Her eyebrows raised and he smirked. Oh yeah, he remembered some of the stuff he'd learned in NSA X-Men school, back when he'd do everything the NSA asked just to stop them sending him back to Walton.

"Okay then." She stepped back and straightened her dress. Brian wondered how she got away with wearing something that short while working for the government, no way could she kick ass in that.

She smirked. "Oh you'd be surprised," she told him. She sat down on a visitor's chair and patted the one beside her.

Brian sat down because he wanted to, not because she told him to. He thought that was probably an important distinction, though he couldn't really be bothered to remember why. Vicodin was pretty strong.

"Travis," he said, surprising himself by remembering. "You said Travis. Where is he?" It had been four months since Brian had heard from him and that was really not usual. Gabe wouldn't tell him anything because Gabe was an obstructive asshole.

"Travis quit."

Brian shook his head. "No way." Travis fucking loved the NSA. He was totally gleeful about every ass he got to kick, every kid he got to save, and every scumbag he got to punch in the head; he loved getting bad guys off the street. The Travis Brian knew would never leave the NSA.

"All right, you're right," she said and Brian felt a surge of triumph until she went on. "Technically he's in rehab."

"Rehab?" Brian echoed. Drugs were how telepaths managed to function in the real world; it wasn't something you could just get cured, not and stay out of the psychiatric ward.

Her hand landed on his arm. Brian jumped and shook her off.

"He told you that the only way for you to get by was to dull your sense, right?" she asked, leaning forward and looking concerned. Bullshit, like she cared about him. "That's what he was taught and it's what he taught you. He's all messed up about that now and he asked me to find you."

Brian rolled his eyes. "What? He's had a change of heart and wants to save me?" The drugs were _good_; they let him pretend to be normal.

"I'd like you to come back to the NSA with me," she said. "You're not doing well, Brian, and you can bullshit me all you like but I know."

He waggled his fingers at her. "Ooh, impressive," he said dryly.

She sat back and folder her hands neatly on her lap. "You're spending less and less time at the job you love because the bands and the fans are too much for you to take. You're in love with your best friend but you've got some crazy idea that you're not allowed to date so you have to watch him hook up with someone else instead. And you just _stole drugs_ from a hospital pharmacy after lying about a little kid. Yes, you're right, you're perfectly fine."

Brian stood up. The corridor roiled a little around him but it stabilised quickly. He was fine. "Fuck you and fuck the NSA," he said. He wanted to add _and fuck Travis_ but he couldn't do that; Travis had saved his life.

"Brian," she called. He didn't want to stop, but he did. She flicked a card at him and he caught it automatically. _Victoria Asher_ it said and a cell number. "Call if you need anything."

Brian tipped his chin, belligerent. "What exactly would I need?"

Asher looked from Brian to the pills in his pocket and back up to his face and didn't say anything at all.

***

**Now:**

Brian ends up grabbing a nap in Gabe's office for a couple of hours while Gabe and his team do their thing and pinpoint the house Charlie was having nightmares about. It's not that he doesn't want to help, but they're trained in that kind of shit. Brian is basically just a human lie detector, going where he's pointed.

When he wakes, it's the horrible, sickly time of the morning, when the sky's just getting light but the sun's still below the horizon, but Brian feels awake, wired.

He digs out his phone and sends a quick, uninformative text to Bob, just _shoot running late, be back whenever_ and shoves it back in his pocket. He hopes Bob doesn't end up staying with him long; he's not going to keep believing this bullshit forever.

Refusing to feel guilty, Brian shrugs on his NSA jacket and wanders into the squad room. The jacket makes him feel like an extra from a bad network cop show and the coffee someone pushes on him is cold and muddy, but he's ready to go, ready to kick some ass.

"Okay, let's go." Gabe appears at his elbow and grabs Brian by the sleeve. "Sexy jacket, Schechter."

"Fuck you," Brian says easily. "You find the house?"

Gabe rolls his eyes. "Like there was any chance we wouldn't."

***

The house that Charlie was (hopefully) kept in would have been pretty fucking impressive back in Brian's hometown in Detroit, but in California it hardly stands out at all. It's three stories tall, with big bay windows and a front yard big enough to almost qualify as _grounds_.

It doesn't look like the kind of place that crazy people use to lock up little kids but Brian trusts Victoria; she's never wrong when it counts.

_Come on_, Gabe thinks at him, tapping Brian on the arm.

"Shouldn't we wait for backup?" Brian asks, quiet as he can, just because someone should say it and back when he was tour managing, people used to say he was the sensible one. Plus, he likes to yank Gabe's chain a little: neither of them are huge fans of waiting.

Gabe just looks at him and Brian grins. Yeah, that's what he thought.

There's no sound as they creep up the path; it's so quiet around here that even the dogs don't bark.

_Can you hear anything?_ Gabe asks. He never speaks when they're out on these jaunts together. It makes sense because it halves the amount of noise they make if Brian's the only one talking but Brian's pretty sure Gabe mostly just thinks it's cool. That, or if anyone catches them, he wants to be able to blame Brian.

"Nothing," Brian tells him quietly. It's creepily quiet, actually, nothing but Gabe's thoughts and Brian's own, and, huh, something that may be the thoughts of that bird sitting in the tree up there. That's fucked up.

Gabe whistles softly and Brian looks up to find him pointing at a crack in one of the windows. Right, like that's going to help. Still, Brian moves closer anyway just to humor him.

Brian can read minds at a distance of about twenty-five feet. It helps if he can see the person but it's not essential and bricks and windows aren't enough to block him, unless they've been specially adapted like in Brian's house.

He's not expecting that pressing his ear up against the window like fucking Nancy Drew will help at all, but actually, he gets the faintest glimmer of a thought.

Fuck it, a glimmer is enough.

"Yeah, there's someone in there," he says, clenching his teeth against the beginnings of a headache. He rubs the centre of his forehead hard.

_What's wrong_? Gabe asks.

Brian shakes his head. He's not sure. He's listened in on people's dreams before (yeah, it's creepy; he's not proud of everything he's done) and this feels sort of like that. He's getting quick flashes of fucked up thoughts, too many and too random to process. Blood, kisses, death, birth, all of it all at once.

Shit, no. Brian instinctively pulls up his shields even though he knows it won't help.

_Bad guys_? Gabe asks like they're in a John Wayne movie.

Brian shakes his head. He doesn't think so. No one with that much craziness going on in their heads can be any threat.

_Worth going in?_

Instead of answering, Brian tries the window. He doesn't _want_ to get closer to that jumbled mess of thoughts exactly, but he's curious now. He's always so fucking curious; he's going to count himself lucky if it doesn't get him killed one day.

_Rock on_. Gabe grins at him and puts his elbow, very carefully, through the window, smashing the glass with a tiny snick.

_The window was like that when we got here_, he thinks at Brian and sticks his hand through the hole to open the window.

Brian tries to go through the window first but Gabe gives him his best _I'm the one with the gun_ look and hops over the windowsill. Brian curses Gabe's epically long legs and follows him way less gracefully.

They find themselves in a big living room with no furniture except some wooden tables and chairs, totally out of place in a room like this. The house is horror-movie quiet and the floorboards squeak because it's just that kind of day. Gabe stops by the door into the hallway and lifts his eyebrows meaningfully in Brian's direction.

Brian sighs but lets his shields down. They're closer to whoever's here now and the thoughts are getting louder. They still don't make any sense, like tuning into a hundred TV stations at once. Brian's headache is getting worse.

There's a pause and then Gabe pokes him. "I said, what's wrong?" he hisses.

"Shit, sorry." Brian rubs his temple one more time then lets his hand drop. "I can't hear a fucking thing with this-- There's someone here and they're," Yeah, there's no good way to explain it, "I think they're in trouble."

"Charlie?" Gabe asks.

"Nah." That would be way too easy. "I think it's an adult. He's this way." Brian steps out into the hall, ignoring Gabe when he puts a hand out to stop him.

The thoughts are coming from upstairs. It's easy to follow them because they just keep getting louder, to the point where he can barely hear his own thoughts under the din.

The stairs give a little under Brian's feet; they probably creak but he can't hear it. Gabe probably snaps at him to come the hell back but Brian doesn't hear that either. He doesn't want to get closer to the noise, but he has to; that's about the only way he can think of to _stop_ it.

He's focused on moving up the stairs as quickly but as silently as he can, so focused that he doesn't realise someone is running along the corridor above until he reaches the top of the stairs and crashes straight into her.

It's not the person who's projecting their thoughts though, it's someone else. Someone familiar. Someone who nearly gets her fist in his face before he grabs it and twists it behind her back.

The ninja woman from the warehouse kicks out and catches him squarely in the knee. He swears and nearly looses his grip but then Gabe's there, arm around her waist, holding her back.

"What the fuck's going on here?" Gabe demands. Ninja Woman bites him and his outraged expression is hilarious. Hey, she _shot_ Brian last time, Gabe should count himself lucky.

"She works for them," Brian tells him, bending to rub his knee.

"I do not," she says, the _idiot_ strongly implied. She stops struggling and looks up at Gabe. "You're Saporta, right?"

"What the hell?" Gabe asks.

She rolls her eyes. "You're Saporta; he's Schechter and if you don't let go of me right now I'm going to kick you in the balls."

Gabe doesn't let go, so she tries. Gabe lets go.

Brian expects her to run, but Ninja Woman just leans against the banisters and folds her arms. "Don't look at me like that," she says, "The NSA is nowhere near as cunning as you think."

Brian snorts. "And you want us to believe you're _not_ one of them?" He wishes Gabe would pull his gun on her. He doesn't need to shoot her; Brian would just feel better if he knew she wasn't going to try to kill him again.

She throws her hands up. "I'm not."

"You shot me." Brian is maybe still a little pissed about that. "I don't know who you are, but you're not one of us."

"Yeah, well you knocked Spencer out and locked him away god knows where and you took--" She cuts herself off.

"Took?" Gabe prompts.

"Nothing." She tips her chin up. "What happened to that kid you rescued?"

"How do you know about him?" Brian demands.

"I know everything," she says grandly, but she looks worried; there's something there and Brian thinks he might be able to get through her shields if it wasn't for the constant droning _noise_ in his head.

"Yeah," he asks, "Then who the hell's upstairs and why is he playing Jackson Pollock with the inside of my head?"

She pales. "Excuse me," she says and grabs the banister, spinning past them onto the next flight of stairs up.

Brian looks at Gabe, Gabe sighs. They take off at a run and catch up with her at the top of the stairs, just as she reaches the landing.

It's fucking loud up here, almost unbearable and Brian follows the thoughts helplessly. He presses his hand to the right door; it's locked.

"Brian?" Gabe asks. His hand lands on Brian's shoulder. He must have said Brian's name a couple of times by now, to sound that sharp.

"He's through there," Brian manages and stands back so Gabe can do his patented door-kicking move; Ninja Woman gets there before Gabe though, stomping the lock with one clunky boot heel.

There's a guy lying in a heap on the floor. His arms are spread out in front of him, eyes dazed and unseeing, muttering under his breath. He's hardly more than a kid, early twenties, no older than Ninja Woman, whose worry becomes a near-panicked internal _Ryan, god no, Ryan--_.

This close, it's like someone's trying to bomb Brian's brain with Tim Burton nightmares. He can't--

He staggers back out into the hallway, trying not to puke. People are dying in Ryan's brain, over and over, different people, different deaths. He's seeing them and Brian doesn't think he means to but he's projecting it and Brian's got no doubt that it's real.

Back before the NSA showed him how to control it, Brian's powers were like this. The voices in his head were constant and unmanagable, overlapping each other until he'd believed the doctors when they told him he was crazy.

This is like that but magnified a thousandfold. Even getting it second-hand, Brian wants to tear his own brain from his skull. There's no end to the voices: abandoned, crying children, desperate, dying mothers, the very worst the world has to offer and it's all here trying to carve a space in Brian's head.

"Ryan," Ninja Woman whispers, dropping to her knees next to him. He doesn't react but his dreams quiet a little, just enough for Brian to find his tongue.

"I doubt he can hear you," Brian tells her. "What the hell is going on?"

When she looks up, her eyes are damp but her jaw is set, determined. "I thought he'd be in the warehouse, but he wasn't." She sounds like she's blaming herself.

"What's your name?" Gabe asks. He's way better at this kind of thing than Brian.

"Z," she says. Brian wonders if that's a code.

"Is this normal for him?" Brian asks her.

Z looks miserable. "No. Seriously, no. He's fine normally. They, he went out for coffee a week ago and he never came back. God." She breaks off, huffing like she's annoyed with herself for getting upset.

Gabe looks hard at Brian. Brian wonders if he looks as green as he feels. His head feels like it might explode. Gabe presses his gun into Brian's hand. "Take this. Stay by the door. Shoot anyone who walks up the stairs."

Brian closes his hands around the butt and doesn't think about why he doesn't carry a gun anymore, that the only thing more horrific than listening to someone's final thoughts is the feeling when they suddenly stop.

Brian watches Gabe go and kneel by Ryan, pull his head up onto Gabe's thigh. Ryan's head rolls uselessly. If he wasn't still projecting a 3D horror movie, Brian would think he was dead.

Gabe fumbles something out of his left breast pocket, a little vial that Brian hadn't known he still carried. Morphine.

One dose used to be enough to shut off Brian's telepathy for a couple of hours. Brian isn't sure it's going be enough to kill Ryan's super-enhanced sense long enough for them to get him back to the NSA, but it's worth a shot.

"What are you doing?" Z hisses, leaning forward.

"Trust him," Brian says, feeling Ryan's visions start to calm, slow, calm until there's nothing but perfect peace in Brian's mind. Well, the perfect peace of Gabe's thoughts and Z's patchwork shields, anyway.

He lets himself sag against the wall for a second, relieved.

"All right, let's get out of here." Gabe gets his arms under Ryan's back and swings him up over his shoulder.

"Careful," Z snaps.

Gabe huffs and makes a face at her. "You want to carry him?"

"I could," Z tells him.

Gabe looks her up and down. "Yeah, I bet you could."

They don't meet anyone on the way out the house and Brian knows he should just feel grateful but it seems too easy.

"Do they just abandon people?" Brian mutters under his breath, leading the way out with Gabe's gun in his hand.

Z keeps pace with him. "These guys just kind of leave people when they're through with them. Like they did that little boy you rescued. Speaking of, where is he?" Brian would call her tone casual except there's an unmistakable edge to her words.

That's the second time she's mentioned him. Brian's head is pounding, his heart racing too hard, and he's too fucked up that he doesn't realise that she's so distracted she's dropped her shields and he's reading her mind until he's already done it. He spins around.

"You're Charlie's _mom_?" he asks, amazed. She's so young. Still, a lot of things make more sense now.

She only hesitates for a second. "Yes," she snaps. "And I nearly got him back but then you had to get in the way."

"Hey, _hey_. I am fucking trained for shit like that. Are you?" Brian doesn't feel guilty. How the hell was he supposed to know? The cases he works don't normally go like this.

"We freelance. We've been tracking these assholes for months; you guys didn't even know they existed." Her defiant posture wobbles. "Is he safe?"

Shit. Brian hesitates and apparently that's enough because Z looks up at him with huge, furious eyes.

"Where's my kid?" she asks, voice carefully dangerous.

"We'll find him," Gabe tells her and carries Ryan past them and out the house. Brian doesn't want to know what Z will do to him if they don't, but he thinks he'll probably deserve it.

***

The NSA doctors don't want to let them near Ryan once they get him back to the medlab which, well, Brian can see where they're coming from. The dude doesn't look good and Brian's not exactly chomping at the bit to get to spend more time with him.

Gabe shoves his way through the curtain behind Z though when the doctors tell her she can come in, and Brian sighs and sits down outside in case he's wanted.

He's not exactly given to deep, introspective examinations of his feelings, but he's got to admit he feels guilty about what happened with Charlie. As if he wasn't feeling bad enough about that shit already. If Z's really his mom and the way she was thinking about him, Brian's got no doubt that she is, then he basically got in the middle of her rescue attempt and split them up again.

_Hey_, Victoria says from somewhere in the room and he jumps.

_Hey,_ he thinks back at her, cautious in case her thoughts are still concussed and nauseating. _How are you feeling?_

Her thoughts shrug at him and she appears from around the corner, walking kind of stiffly, but looking way less pale. She's wearing hospital green scrubs and Brian blinks because he doesn't think he's ever seen her in pants before.

"Stop thinking about my legs," Victoria tells him, taking the seat next to his. It brings back memories of the first time they met. Except she was way more put together then and he was a _little_ more fucked up. "Just a little," she says softly and Brian doesn't know if she's talking about him or her. He doesn't ask.

"There's some fucked up shit going down," Brian tells her instead.

Victoria hums. "Yes, I know. I scanned the guy you just brought in." She makes a face. "That was a mistake."

Brian shudders emphatically and agrees. They sit in companionable, slightly telepathically-scarred silence for a while. It's impossible to be totally silent when someone can read your thoughts and you can read hers, but they're both good at pretending for the sake of politeness. Well, Victoria's polite; Brian just doesn't like to get personal.

Maybe ten minutes later, the curtain shoves aside and Gabe comes stalking out, looking frustrated. He's followed by a sullen Z who glances longingly over her shoulder once before catching Brian watching and straightening her shoulders defiantly.

Gabe's frown softens a little when he sees Victoria but he jerks his chin at Brian. "Come on," he says, "Interrogation."

"Ooh, I'm scared," Z mutters, following.

Brian groans and stands up. He's tired, he'd really like to go home not sit through an interrogation right now. Victoria pats him consolling on the back, and flashes him a picture of her big, fluffy bed and the long bubble bath she's planning to have very soon. No one will ever believe Brian when he tells them, but Victoria is secretly kind of evil.

Usually, when Brian gets involved in suspect interviews instead of Victoria, Gabe makes him sit in the anteroom and watch through the two-way mirror. Apparently Brian does not make a convincing federal agent which, yeah, he could have told them that when they hired him. Today though, Gabe steers him straight into the main interrogation room.

"She already knows who you are," he explains quietly when Brian shoots him a look.

It's a good point, so Brian sits down at the desk and tries to look like he's not winging it. Luckily, Brian's damn good at pretending he's got everything under control.

Z paces the room once, twice. Her long grey cardigan fans out behind her and there are butterfly transfers on her jeans' back pockets; it makes her look like a middleschooler. She's got to be older than she looks unless she had Charlie when she was in kindergarten, but Brian would bet she's still really fucking young.

"Sit down," Gabe tells her, tone deceptively easy. He kicks out the chair opposite Brian's and lounges against the wall until Z sits. Gabe smiles. "Want to tell us what you know?"

Z glares at him. "What's the point?" She points angrily at Brian. "He'll just get it all out of my head, anyway."

"You're shielded," Brian reminds her and doesn't mention that sometimes her shields wobble.

Z rolls her eyes. "Right, like you can't get past that. I've heard stories." She's putting on this tough girl act, but it's easy to tell that whatever stories she's heard have freaked her out.

"We don't do that," Brian says quickly.

He doesn't need the warning look from Gabe to tell him that he could have used that as a bargaining chip. Just the idea of forcibly breaking into someone's mind makes him want to hurl and he's not leaving it hanging over Z like a threat. He's heard the stories too, knows it's technically possible, but it's a line he won't cross. He softens his voice because he's never going to get anywhere with Z if they keep sniping at each other. "_I_ don't do that."

Z looks at him for a long time. "How fucking noble," she says eventually, sitting back. Brian can't tell if she's being sarcastic or not.

He decides to go with no, just because it's easier. "Can you tell us what you know about--" He flounders, they know so little he doesn't even know what questions to ask. "About the house."

"No," Z says and raises her eyebrows, challenging. Brian blows out a breath and sits back. He's not going to so much as brush at her mind. If she knows enough to shield, she might know enough to be able to feel him there and then it'll be as good as proving her right about him. "Not until you tell me what you've done with Spencer."

Brian looks at Gabe. He actually doesn't know, last he heard, Smith was still unconscious. It belatedly occurs to him that he should have wondered about that, considering he's the one who knocked him out, but this week has been kind of busy.

Gabe leans forward. "I'll go get him, but only if you'll talk."

Z folds her arms across her stomach. "Spencer first," she says.

Gabe nods. "Deal." He bounces up out of his seat, out the door and Brian and Z are left in awkward silence.

"Look, I'm-," Brian starts then breaks off. He's really shitty at apologies, especially when he was only partly in the wrong. "I'm sorry about Charlie."

Z's eyes flare but she keeps her voice level. "About fucking up my one chance to rescue him or about letting him getting taken _again_ once you had him?"

Brian holds up his hands. "Hey, there is no way I could have known who you were at the warehouse. But, the other thing, yeah. I'm really fucking sorry we didn't take better care of him."

Z doesn't reply, but after a minute she nods slowly. "I'm not sorry I shot you," she says, "But I'm you know, sorry you got shot."

Brian can't help it, he laughs. "Fair enough," he agrees.

Z's lips twists like she's contemplating smiling but before she makes up her mind, the door swings open and Gabe leads Spencer Smith into the room. Spencer looks as much like a college kid as he did when he was trying to smash Brian's face in, but he's scruffier now, his beard and hair ragged, a rainbow of green, brown and purple bruises across one side of his head.

Brian feels a twinge of guilt that he could really do without.

"Spencer," Z breathes, the most emotion Brian's ever heard in her voice and launches herself at Smith. She jumps up to get her arms around his neck and Spencer huffs but catches her, pressing his face into her shoulder and her face into his.

Brian looks away, catches Gabe's eye. Gabe makes a big _what can you do?_ gesture.

"Okay," Z says after a minute. She curls her hand around Spencer's wrist and leads him over to her chair, pushes him down into it before perching herself on the corner of the table. Spencer makes a protesting sound and starts to stand up, but Z just gives him a _look_ until he sits down again.

"Okay?" Gabe asks. He's got one ankle folded over the other, his hip cocked, like this is all just a boring Sunday afternoon for him.

Z draws one foot up onto the desk and warps her hands around her knee. "This guy came to Ryan about a year ago," she says clearly, "He said he was doing tests on people with special skills like Ryan's and he was willing to pay." She bites her lip. "We thought it was weird, but we really needed the money. Everything was fine to start but the he started asking about Charlie. We _didn't_ tell him anything."

Gabe nods like he's saying he believes she didn't sell out her kid.

"We told him fuck no he wasn't experimenting on Charlie and he was cool about it but then--" She twists her hands in the hem of her shirt and Spencer squeezes her knee. "Ryan took Charlie out for the afternoon and they never came back."

"Where do you fit in?" Gabe asks, all his attention switching to Spencer, probably to give Z a moment.

"I'm the only other person who knows about Ryan's whole telepathy thing," Spencer tells him, "So Z came to me."

Brian wonders what that was like, one second being in college, the next having to go rogue, break into warehouses, get beaten up and arrested by the NSA. Dude can't be having a good month, really.

"How'd you know who we are?" Brian asks, because that's been bothering him. Z recognised his name the first time she heard it.

Z laughs softly and glances at Spencer. He sucks on his lower lip, glances away then back again. "Yeah, okay, I may have done a little research." He shrugs awkwardly like he still has some bruising.

"Here at the NSA, we like to call that kind of research hacking,' Gabe tells him.

Spencer shrugs again, easier this time. "Dr N told Z that the government was using telepaths. We wanted to see if you guys were people we could trust."

"Dr N?" Brian asks, ignoring the fact that whatever Spencer found apparently told him that the NSA _weren't_ trustworthy.

"That's what he called himself," Z says, "The guy doing all the research. I don't know what his real name is."

Brian believes her. Even if he couldn't pick up the waves of worry from Spencer, he'd believe her; they talk a good game, but it's so fucking obvious that they need help and they know it.

"Okay," Gabe says. "Thanks." He walks forward, one hand on the back of Brian's chair while he leans forward across the table toward Z and Spencer. "Here's what we're going to do. We're not going to prosecute you for shooting Brian or trying to knee me in the balls but you guys have got to stay out of this from now on. It's way too big for you."

"No way," Z says immediately. Spencer takes a second to nod, agreeing with her. He looks tired. Then Z's on her feet again. "No. They've got my kid."

"Yeah, and we're going to get him back for you." Gabe walks toward the door. "You guys can wait here 'til Ryan's released then we're going to find you somewhere safe to stay, while _we_ take these assholes down." He winks at her. "We're the professionals, baby."

Z snorts inelegantly. Privately, Brian agrees.

***

Brian's head hurts like fuck by the time he gets home. Every beat of his heart sends a pulse of pain from temple to temple and he hasn't ruled out puking. In fact, puking sounds like it'd be a fun change of pace right about now.

His hands shake so hard on the keypad that he nearly punches his fist through the glass instead. Saving stupid kids from unidentified evil is exhausting, Jesus.

Brian has never loved his hallway as much as he does right now. It's dark, it's cool, it's quiet, it's--

Actually, it's not that quiet.

"Schechter?" Bob calls from the living room, sounding like he's just woken up. God, somehow Brian had forgotten all about him.

Bob rounds the corner into the hallway, but he looks like a pale blur until he's almost on top of Brian. Brian's eyes aren't working right yet; spending too much time using his telepathy always makes at least one of his other senses go haywire.

"Where the hell have you-," Bob starts to ask then breaks off. "Woah. You look like shit."

Brian manages some kind of a laugh. It makes him sound like a demented serial killer but that's okay, he feels like one too.

"Love you too, Bryar," he says. His bedroom is less than twenty feet away, his bed less than twenty-five; he can get there. He's just going to lean against this wall for a little while longer.

"Did you hit your head?" Bob asks then frowns, leaning closer. "_Did_ you hit your head? You look totally out of it."

Brian's tempted to take a dip in Bob's head to see exactly how shitty Brian looks to him, but the idea of trying to read any thoughts at all makes him gag a little.

"Brian?" Bob's voice has gone soft and, great, Brian must look like he's _dying_ or something.

"I'm okay," Brian says, "Headache." He doesn't mean to lean into Bob, but Bob puts his hand on Brian's arm so what's Brian supposed to do?

"Hey," Bob says, sounding confused but game. He puts his hand on the back of Brian's neck, hand all warm and heavy and grounding.

"Bad day," he says into Bob's shirt.

They stay like that longer than is good for Brian's mental picture of himself as rough, tough and independent, but if there's anyone Brian can be a little bit needy with, it's Bob, has always been Bob.

Shit, Brian missed him.

Eventually, Bob lets go of him, turns him with a firm hand on his shoulder and nudges him toward his bedroom. "Go lie down," he orders, "I'll find you some aspirin."

Brian's half way through his bedroom door but he stops, shakes his head. "No," he says, "No aspirin."

Bob makes a face. "Dude, come on."

Brian just shakes his head. It takes him that one step closer to puking. "No," he repeats, knowing he's being stubborn but, fuck, he watched Gabe slip Ryan morphine earlier and he'd _wanted_.

Bob grabs his arm before he can turn away. "Schechter, what the fuck is going on with you?" he demands.

Brian shakes his head. "Dude, just leave it." He doesn't say please, but he's tempted to.

"No," Bob tells him, squeezing Brian's biceps hard. "No, I won't fucking leave it."

Bob's pissed, but more than pissed, he's scared, and even though Brian knows that, it doesn't help.

"Just _leave it_," he says and shoves Bob off, barrels his way into the bathroom. He splashes cold water on his face then spends ten minutes with his head pressed to the cool glass, just enjoying the quiet.

By the time he gets out of the bathroom, Bob's nowhere to be found. Brian can feel him stewing in the living room but he's too tired to go apologise for being an asshole.

He heads for bed instead, collapsing on top of his comforter fully dressed. He doesn't even have time to blink before he's asleep.

***

Brian's locked up, locked away, forgotten, unknown. Every day is another round of medications that don't do anything to take away the voices he hears, of doctors in white coats who shake their heads over him and dwindling visits from friends who don't know how to talk to him anymore.

Brian shifts and thrashes on his bed, lost in his head. He's never given up on anything before, but he's given up on himself.

His mom came once, he thinks she cried; it might have been yesterday, might have been last year. He doesn't know any more.

The door opens and someone walks in, grabbing his arm and Brian tries to struggle because he doesn't want any more fucking steroids.

They're saying, "Shit, Brian, wake up," shaking him and wait, no, that makes no sense.

Brian's eyes snap open and he grabs at the person standing over him, choking for breath and holding on to solid shoulders so hard that he thinks he could break them.

"Brian?" Bob asks and Brian makes a sound that isn't a sob but isn't anything good and drops his head against Bob's shoulder.

"What were you dreaming about? What's Walton?" Bob asks.

His arms are wrapped tight around Brian's back and Brian should object to that but he doesn't, because he's still mostly asleep and he's wholly freaked out. That's the only excuse he has for grabbing Bob's collar and dragging him in closer. He hates those dreams, hasn't had them for a while now, but this one was as vivid as they've ever been: Walton House at its fucking finest.

He wants to shut Bob up so he doesn't ask again and he wants to climb into Bob's head where there's always peace.

"Sorry," Brian says even though he knows Bob won't know what he's apologising for and lets himself slip inside Bob's head a little, past the surface thoughts which are tired and worried and into the place Bob keeps in his head for keeping the beat, like a steady, breathing metronome.

It's damn soothing and Bob's right _there_, saving Brian's sanity like always, so Brian has to kiss him.

Brian would like it noted that he's _really_ fucked up right now.

Bob tries to say something against Brian's mouth but Brian licks his bottom lip and Bob's mouth just falls open a little, enough. Brian's not playing fair because he's right there inside Bob's head and he knows what Bob wants and--

Shit. Brian pulls back, disgusted with himself. Wow, way to ignore so many boundaries.

"I'm sorry," he says again. He always promised himself he wouldn't let this happen. He's wanted it for years and he's caught every thought and fantasy Bob's had about wanting Brian back, but Bob's never gone for it and that's what matters. Brian's learned that what's inside people's heads doesn't matter; it's what they _do_ that counts.

But Bob's not shoving him away and he's not letting Brian go now that Brian's started to squirm. He smoothes his hands down Brian's back, holds him firmly. "It's okay," he says and there are too many thoughts in his head for Brian to process easily, but he's not lying. That's important. "I'm not gonna make you talk."

Brian almost laughs because that's actually not the worst of his worries right now. But Bob's kissing him now, careful kisses that make Brian's breath catch and his heart start to pound from something other than nightmares.

He closes his eyes and lets himself get lost in it, in the steady rhythm that lets him think nothing but _Bob_.

***

Brian wakes again later that night. He's not sure if he's embarrassed or relieved that somewhere in middle of all that kissing (fuck, he kissed Bob) he must have fallen asleep. It's probably for the best.

It's still not even close to morning, that's why he doesn't bother getting up. It has nothing at all to do with not wanting to disturb Bob who's spread-eagled across more than his half of the bed, snoring softly, his back broad and touchable under his t-shirt.

Brian's not sentimental; he's just lazy.

Bob twitches a little in his sleep, curling one arm closer to his chest then flinging it out, sudden and unexpected. The surgery scar on his wrist shines whitely in the moonlight and Brian can't resist touching it, stroking his thumb softly over the old mark.

Whatever Bob's dreaming about has to be good because he doesn't wake, just curls his fingers a little toward Brian's but, fuck no, Brian is not waking up in the middle of the night to hold hands. He has some standards.

Distantly, he hears a car pull up outside on the street, but doesn't really pay any attention to it. The woman next door works shifts at the hospital; she's always coming home at weird times.

There's a sudden crash, loud and shocking in the otherwise silent night and Brian's out of bed before he registers that a window's broken, thoughts from outside rushing in through the broken shields.

They coalesce in his mind so he knows what's coming just before it does, but too late to do anything about it.

"Bob!" he yells, waking Bob and pushing him toward the door just as a whoosh-roar noise of igniting fire fills his ears.

"What the fuck?" Bob staggers against the doorframe, but he stays on his feet.

There's smoke billowing from the kitchen doorway already and Brian swears, grabbing Bob's wrist and pulling him toward the nearest exit, the side door off the living room.

Except no, that's not right. There are people outside that door, waiting for them. They expect them to choose that exit.

"Not that way," he says and accidentally inhales a lungful of smoke, folding forward with the force of his coughing. He gives up to talking and just plants his feet, physically holding Bob back.

"What the hell?" Bob coughs too. "Why not?"

Brian shakes his head. "Trust me?" he asks, and fuck it hurts to speak. His eyes are smarting. The fire's spreading way too fast.

The alarm is blaring and that's good, help will be here soon; not before they suffocate, of course, but soon.

There's thick smoke between them and the front door, flames are licking the edges of the carpet. God, Brian's going to kill someone for this.

He grabs Bob's wrist and pulls him toward the front door.

"Brian, what the-?" Bob protests but breaks off to cough. Brian drops to his knees, dragging Bob down with him and holds his breath, trying not to inhale while they crawl clumsily toward the door.

Shit. He's had training in this - one thing telepaths are great at is finding unconscious people in burning buildings - but it's totally different in real life. For one thing, he really misses the oxygen tank.

His head's swimming; his eyes are watering so hard that he can't see more than indistinct shapes and he's not sure they're going to--

His outstretched hand collides with something solid, warm but wooden and if he had time to spare, he might say a prayer of thanks for that.

The door latch is hot, it burns his grasping fingers, but he gets it open on the second try and they spill outside into dark, quiet, _clean_ air.

"Bob?" Brian looks over his shoulder; Bob's crawling out after him. His face is red from the heat, lower lip cracked and starting to bleed. There's black soot in his hair and smeared across his face and chest but he meets Brian's eye, staggers with him down the path to the sidewalk.

They fall back to their knees, holding each other up, and Brian can't do anything but fight for every painful breath while fire engines scream around them and Brian's neighbours start to swarm from their houses.

"Are you okay?" Bob asks, mouth right by Brian's ear.

Brian nods but he doesn't let go of his death grip (oh, bad choice of words) on Bob's forearms.

"What the fuck was that?" Bob says, lifting his head to stare toward Brian's house. Flames are licking out of all the front windows now and Brian can't imagine anything's going to be salvageable. Shit.

He blinks hard.

"I-," he starts to say, because he's going to have to tell Bob some of what's going on now. He can't see any way around it.

Before he can get the rest of the sentence out though, something along the lines of _I kind of work for the government. And there seem to be these people who want to kidnap telepaths. Which, by the way, did I mention that I'm one of those?_, a car screeches to a stop an inch from Brian's bare heel and twin door slams, timed perfectly, tell him the cavalry has arrived.

"Brian!" Victoria shouts at the same time that Gabe is saying, "Schechter, Jesus," and, great, Brian's on his knees on his lawn holding onto Bob, his house is burning down and the situation is about to get even _more_ complicated.

Brian staggers to his feet and, after a beat, so does Bob. Bob takes one look at Victoria and Gabe in their power suits, the kind that scream _fed_ to anyone paying attention, and starts radiating confusion.

"Get in the ambulance," Gabe tells him, gripping Brian's arm. Brian lets Gabe steer him away from the house and pretends like he doesn't know Gabe's relieved he's okay.

"Bob," Brian says, looking over his shoulder.

Bob shoots Gabe and Victoria a confused look but he follows Brian into the back of the ambulance.

"We'll catch up," Victoria tells them and slams the ambulance door shut.

"Um, what?" Bob asks as the ambulance starts up. "Why do I feel like I'm being hustled away? Don't you want--"

"It's fine," Brian interrupts him. He rubs at his chest. His lungs feel weird. He concentrates on that and not the fact that they're being whisked away to the NSA and that he still has no idea how he's going to get out of this without telling Bob the truth.

Brian only realises he's thumping his own knee when Bob's hand closes over his. "Okay, Schechter?" he asks quietly, too quiet for the medics up front to hear.

Brian nods jerkily. His chest still feels weird and he knows that the medlab is going to be their first stop. Fucking great.

"I really fucking _hate_ people who try to kill me," he mutters.

Bob goes still then, "Well, yeah," he agrees, sounding totally lost but like it's still a sentiment he can get behind. "You're going to tell me what--"

"Yeah," Brian interrupts tiredly. "I'm going to tell you what's going on." Somehow. Preferably not the whole truth, though.

They're rushed straight through to the medlab when they reach the NSA which is a small blessing.

Bob's staring around himself with wide eyes, eyebrows climbing so high they're lost under the messy tangle of his hair and his thoughts are a mess, nothing like the calm ones Brian can usually rely on. Pretty much the only thing Bob's reassuring himself with is _Brian's not freaking out_, which makes Brian feel like a giant heel.

Blackington, one of Gabe's favourite minions, arrives just as the doctors are telling Brian and Bob that they're going to live.

"They're back," Blackington says, catching Brian's eye and jerking his chin toward upstairs.

Brian nods in acknowledgement.

"Yeah, coming," he says and Blackington disappears.

"Did we just get _summoned_?" Bob demands, sliding off his gurney and following Brian across the lab.

"Yeah, no," Brian says. Then, even though he knows it's a longshot. "Hey, why don't you stay down here?"

Bob snorts. "Nice try, Schechter," he says and, yeah, that's pretty much what Brian thought he'd say.

Bob's eyes get wider and wider as he follows Brian into the elevators, up to the thirty-ninth floor and through the maze of corridors to Gabe's section.

Everyone they pass greets Brian and, just to emphasise that he's Someone around here, a group of interns stop gossiping and start trying to look like they're working as he passes by. If he weren't distracted by Bob's ever-growing confusion, he'd take a minute to explain to them that, yeah, that's not how telepathy works.

Victoria stands up when Brian pushes through the swing door to the Major Crimes bullpen. She's looking better than the last time Brian saw her, way less like she might keel over. Her eyes flick to Bob and _nice_, she thinks approvingly at Brian. Brian wants to kill her. She grins.

"You okay?" Gabe asks, reaching out like he wants to put his hand on Brian's shoulder but doesn't.

Brian clears his throat. Seriously, his throat fucking _kills_.

"Two guys," he says, "Did you find them? They were waiting round back, expecting us to come out that way."

Bob still next to him. "What?" he asks.

No one answers him. Apparently he's Brian's responsibility, great.

"No, they'd gone by the time we got there," Victoria tells him. "What did they look like?"

Brian shakes his head, "Didn't see."

"I think maybe I did," Bob volunteers, still looking epically weirded out by everything.

His thoughts are projecting pretty strongly and Brian latches onto one in particular before he realises he's done it. Bob did get a look at one of the guys; he saw his reflection in the long hall mirror when they were on their knees, crawling to the front door.

Brian gets a good look at Bob's memory of the guy but he's going to wait for Bob to give it because, well. Victoria' must be seeing what Brian's seeing though, and before Brian can stop her, she's flagging down Suarez.

She rattles off a description of the guys Bob saw and Brian swallows hard, watching as Bob's eyes get wider and wider.

"Okay," Bob says slowly when Victoria's finished and Suarez has nodded and hurried away. He looks at Brian then back at Victoria, eyebrows knotting together. "I'm confused."

There's a pause then, "No, you're not," says Gabe, because he's an unhelpful asshole.

"No, I'm not," Bob agrees slowly. It's actually worse knowing that he's worked something out but waiting for him to say the words. "I know there's another explanation here. Please tell me you didn't just read my mind?" He's looking at Victoria.

Victoria hesitates. She flashes Brian a quick question and no, Brian has _not_ told Bob and no, she doesn't get to judge him.

"I did," she agrees. She sounds apologetic but Brian knows that's mostly for his benefit. It doesn't matter to her what Bob thinks of them.

It matters to Brian though.

"Bob," he says and Bob rounds on him.

"Schechter, you owe me so many answers." He folds his arms.

"He really does," Gabe agrees and wow, he is so off Brian's Christmas card list. "You're gonna wanna wait and have this conversation somewhere more private." He waves his hand meaningfully.

Brian sighs. "Yeah, okay," he agrees; they've attracted quite the audience. He puts his hand on Bob's shoulder and gives him a little push toward Gabe's office. "Trust me, Bryar," he adds quietly when Bob hesitates.

That's the third time he's used that line tonight and it used to make him feel good that Bob always, _always_ trusts him, but he knows that after they've had the conversation that's coming, Bob's never going to trust him again.

Bob rounds on him as soon as the door's shut. "I am having a really bad night, Brian," he warns, "Don't fuck with me here."

Brian shakes his head. "Do I look like I'm fucking with you?" Hell, he doesn't have enough energy to _fuck_ Bob right now let alone fuck _with_ him.

Bob sits on the corner of Gabe's desk. He picks up the little green rubber snake that Gabe claims has been known to give inspirational pep talks at three a.m.

"Talk."

Brian scratches his neck. "This is the NSA," he says, "The National Security Administration. They're feds."

Bob raises his eyebrows, all _no shit_?

Brian winces. "They employ telepaths? Like Asher and-" _me_. He can't say it. He folds his arms. "It's not as weird as it sounds."

Bob just looks at him for so long that Brian has to look away. He paces away from Bob to stare blankly out Gabe's window. Even in the middle of the night, it's a damn good view, right over the bay. Brian tries to hypnotise himself on the flashing lights on top of a building a few blocks over.

_Brian, can you read my mind?_ he hears Bob asks and is answering, "What? No," before he realises that, oh holy fucking shit, Bob did not ask that question out loud.

Brian makes himself turn around.

Bob's mouth is slightly open, his eyes very wide. His thoughts are all over the place.

He doesn't really believe what he's suspecting, still can't quite make himself believe it, and Brian knows he could bullshit his way out of this.

He doesn't though. "Yes," he says, trying again, and it feels like something hard and fatal is lodged in his chest.

Bob's eyes go wide. "Shit," he says then he apparently wakes up to exactly what that means. _Fuck, can you read my thoughts right now? Fuck, are you-?_

"Bob," Brian interrupts because he has to, can't cope with listening to Bob freak out right now. Bob never freaks out. Bob's calm and logical and calms Brian down when he freaks out. That's how they work. "Bob, please."

He puts a hand on Bob's arm and he's never begged for anything, but he'll beg for this. Bob doesn't give him a chance though; he flinches at Brian's touch and jerks away, backing up one step then another.

Considering the look on Bob's face right now, it's really hard to remember that a couple of hours ago, they'd been kissing and Brian had actually felt good. It doesn't help at all that Bob's now thinking of exactly the same thing.

Oh, god. This is pretty much number one on Brian's list of nightmares.

"Bob," he tries again. He doesn't really seem able to say anything else.

"What the fuck?" Bob asks. His voice is quiet and controlled, the way it gets when he's really, really angry. "You're a secret government mindreader?" He laughs bitterly. "Is this the fucking Twilight Zone?"

"Telepath," Brian corrects automatically. "Mindreader isn't PC." He's trying to get Bob to smile, but it falls completely flat. Bob's retreating in his own mind, skittering around thoughts that he doesn't want Brian to see, because, because he doesn't trust Brian any more.

Brian steps back and holds up his hands. "I'm not in your mind right now," he says, drawing his shields tight around himself because he doesn't want to listen to Bob start hating him and, even if he did want to, he wouldn't.

"Well, thank you," Bob spits, "That's really fucking reassuring. You're not in my mind right _now_. Thanks, Schechter, that makes all the difference."

He turns toward the door and no, fuck no, Brian cannot let them end like this. Bob's his best friend; Brian would be even more of a headcase than he already is without Bob.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," he says quickly. He's normally really bad at apologies, but this one comes easy. "It wasn't anything personal. No one knows."

Bob's eyes go wide then narrow, angrier still. "It wasn't _personal_?" He throws his hands up. "If you've been in my head all this time, you'll know just how fucking _personal_ it was." His chin is set and he meets Brian's eye.

"I'm sorry," Brian tries again, no caveat this time.

Bob nods, lips pursed. "Someone said something about a hotel," he says, hand on the door, "I'll see you around."

***

**Then:**

Late at night, three days after Bob got out of the hospital, Brian got a text message from Gabe.

_heard you met my vicky-t. smart girls are so fucking hot right?_

Brian rolled his eyes. Still, it was quiet as fuck in his apartment and he'd finished all the teevo-ed episode of Friday Night Lights that he'd been saving for after the album dropped; he figured he might as well reply.

The keys blurred in front of his eyes a little and he rubbed them. Fuck, he was tired. _sure, if you say so_ he wrote back and poured himself some more knock-off JD. It was the only thing that had been left in his liquor cabinet and it tasted like someone had pissed in paintstripper.

Gabe took so long to reply that Brian finished off the bottle while he was waiting. Even then, the reply was only _oh yeah baby trust me_.

Brian felt weirdly disappointed. It wasn't like he'd wanted Gabe to pick up Asher's cause to recruit Brian back into the NSA, he'd just wanted... something.

Fuck it, he'd just wanted some human interaction, even if it came from Gabe. It wasn't like he was lonely, Brian didn't get lonely, but Bob had Patrick to take care of him and Brian had felt totally in the way when he'd called earlier and he didn't really have anyone else.

Or no one else he could call up half drunk and totally depressed, at any rate.

Fucking Asher, he'd been doing fine until she came along, lecturing him on how to live his life and telling him shit about Travis. The idea of Travis in some government rehab centre made Brian feel all twisted up and sick inside.

He picked his coat off the floor and let himself out of his apartment. Except it was too warm for a jacket so he left it on the doorstep. He couldn't be bothered to care if anyone stole it.

Brian usually avoided the liquor store on the corner of his block because it was kind of sleazy, but it was close so he ducked inside.

If he hadn't been drinking, if he hadn't taken some Vicodin earlier, he would have known something was wrong way sooner. As it was, he was halfway into the store before he looked up and saw two shotguns pointed at him.

Well, shit. This was not his week.

"Woah," he said automatically and held up his hands. He could kick ass when necessary but not two-on-one and not when they were pointing shotguns at him. "You know what, turns out I'm in totally the wrong store." He started to back away. The door was still open against his palm and if he could just--

He glanced over Shotgun Guy One's shoulder and, shit.

The cashier - pretty, blonde Greta who wanted to play the piano professionally and always looked at Brian like she was disappointed in him - was crouched on her knees in the middle of one aisle, hands cupped over the back of her head.

Damn.

"You were going?" Shotgun Guy Two prompted. Brian wondered if he was actually dumb enough to let Brian leave.

"Yeah, not so much actually," Brian decided and let the door swing closed.

The girl's - Greta. Brian always felt weird about knowing people's names when they'd never told him - head snapped up. She didn't look disappointed this time; she looked like she thought he was crazy.

He could live with that.

Someone gave him a shove in the middle of his back and Brian tripped over his feet and landed in front of Greta.

Shit, well that was embarrassing. Less JD before confronting armed robbers, he decided.

"Hi," he said to Greta, resisting the urge to rub his knee because, shit, that had hurt. Fuck, this rescuing people thing was harder than it looked. Back at the NSA they'd made out like Brian would be good at it or something.

"Hi," she echoed, her eyes wide and confused.

"So, I'm Brian," was about as far as he got in his suave and reassuring introduction before something big, heavy and _painful_ clocked him in the side of the head.

That was that for Brian for a while.

When he blinked his way back to consciousness, his head throbbed and he was propped into a sitting position against a rack of wine coolers. Classy.

"Are you okay?" Greta whispered and Brian winced when he tried to turn his head to get a look at her.

"Peachy," he croaked. He'd never actually gotten knocked out before, no one had told him it would feel this shitty.

Her eyes flicked over to when the Shotgun Twins were standing talking to each other in harsh whispers. The cash draw was upturned and empty on the counter.

"I don't know what they're waiting for," she murmured. "They've got all the money."

Right, that was where Brian came in. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He never normally had to work to hear someone's thoughts; most of his time was spent working _not_ to hear them. There was too much shit in his body though and his head hurt like fuck. He couldn't hear anything.

"Hey, are you all right?" Greta touched his arm. "Brian?"

"Yeah." He opened his eyes and frowned when there were suddenly two of her. He blinked until she resolved back into one. Better. "Just got a headache." That made more sense than _my spidey sense is failing me_.

Greta hesitated. "I guess we just-- Do we wait?" She looked fidgety like she really wanted to do something.

"I guess." Except Brian was totally onboard with doing something. If only he could concentrate long enough to think what.

His head throbbed and he reached up to see if he was bleeding, stopped when his hands started to shake. That made no sense, he wasn't scared. He didn't really care if someone wanted to put a bullet in his brain. Stupid hands, he thought, watching as they continued to tremble even after he'd curled them into fists.

Greta shot him a look.

"Are you _jonesing_?" she hissed, like that would be way worse than being held hostage.

"No," Brian snapped because he wasn't, no way. He just felt like shit. "I got hit on the head, remember?"

Greta rolled her eyes. "Sure," she said, "You looked like shit _before_ that too," and took a bottle of cheap vodka down off the shelf just above her head. She cracked the top off efficiently and handed it to Brian. "On the house," she added archly.

Brian wanted to put the bottle back out of principle because he wasn't fucking jonesing. His mouth was dry though and the bitter scent of vodka made him thirsty.

The first gulp didn't do anything and Brian felt a rush of triumph that felt a little too much like relief. The second was the same but the third-- He took his third swallow and suddenly the shakes were gone. His head felt clear, his stomach settled.

Shit. He took another swig.

"Woah, okay," Greta said and took the bottle away from him. "That's enough."

"I don't like vodka," he told her helplessly. Shit. This was... not a good development. Maybe Asher hadn't been so far off after all, oh fuck.

Greta patted his hand. "You'll be okay," she said shortly, like she really wanted to be concerned but was kind of preoccupied by the whole thing with the armed robbers. "Now, listen. I have a plan."

Brian shook his head, trying to clear it, because fuck, yes, they did need a plan.

Greta grabbed his arm and gave him a little shake. "Are you listening to me?" At Brian's nod, she continued, "There's a phone in the office out back. If I can get to it, I can call the cops."

"No. What?" Brian didn't like that plan. He should be the one doing the heroics; he was a tour manager, hail marys always fell to the tour manager.

Greta shook his head like she'd prefer he wasn't here. That wasn't right. He'd come in here to save her. "I need you to stay here," she told him, using a hand on the shelf to pull herself to her feet.

Brian tried to pull himself up to, but stumbled. His elbow cracked one bottle against another, loud, and Greta dropped back to the floor just before Shotgun Guy One looked over.

"Hey! Keep still," he shouted, and glared at them for a while before turning back to his buddy.

"Sorry," Brian muttered, embarrassed. Greta didn't bother to reassure him. Her eyes were flicking from the Shotgun Twins to the counter and back. Brian guessed that was the way she had to go for the phone.

"Wait," Brian said. He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to compose himself into something reassuring when she ignored him. He used to be reassuring. "You're never going to get past them like this. Give me a minute, I'll distract them." He was apparently totally fucking useless at plans and saving the day, but he was pretty sure he could still be a decoy.

"How are you going to distract them?" Greta asked suspiciously. "I don't like this plan if it leads to you getting killed."

"It won't." It probably wouldn't. Maybe. That wasn't really the point. He rolled up into a crouch. "Ready?" She didn't look convinced, but she nodded. "Okay."

Brian stood up and weaved his way out of their aisle, to the middle of the store. It really wasn't hard to act like he couldn't walk in a straight line. Whiskey plus a blow to the head plus vodka made walking kind of challenging.

"Hey," he called out. The Shotgun Twins' heads jerked up in a way that would have been comical under other circumstances. "Hey, guys, can you maybe get on with it. I got places to be, you know?" He was exaggerating the slur in his voice, even if only slightly.

"Yeah?" Shotgun Guy One stepped forward. He was blond, kind of skinny, Brian could probably have taken him under other circumstances. "You want I should hit you again?"

Brian smiled lazily and stepped back. "Nah. I was thinking I could just leave."

"Like fuck," Shotgun Guy One lifted his shotgun. He had to adjust his hold like he couldn't get a good grip and Brian wondered if he'd ever shot anyone before.

Brian took a steadying breath and hoped he knew what he was doing. Just a tiny peak into this guy's head would have been nice, just to know if he was really going to shoot Brian.

"It's been fun though," Brian told him. He reached back to where he was expecting the door handle to be. It wasn't and he stumbled, his hand slid against the door, barking his palm on the wood.

Shit, talk about method acting.

Brian tried to keep his footing, but his centre of gravity wasn't where he was expecting it to be and he landed on his knees. He winced when someone laughed at him, both of them probably. Fuck, this wasn't working out how it was supposed to.

"You're a fucking mess, man," Shotgun Guy One told him and smacked Brian between the shoulder blades with the butt of his shotgun.

Brian sprawled forward, hands sliding on the dusty floor. He froze when his gaze slid past Shotgun Guys One and Two and saw Greta, totally exposed and halfway toward the counter. "Wait," Brian rasped, not sure if he was talking to Greta or the guys who were about to turn around and see her.

Shotgun Guy One kicked Brian's shoulder lazily and turned around. He stopped when he saw Greta. "Jesus, seriously?" he asked and shot at her.

She dove out the way but she was too slow. Brian watched blood bloom across the back of her white shirt and let his head fall to the floor, helpless and sick, before he could see her fall.

There was silence after the gunshot.

Brian closed his eyes. None of this was fucking real, he decided. No way had he just let that happen.

"Shit," he heard one of the two assholes mutter.

"Come on," the other one said, "We've got to get out of here. Forget the rest of the money."

Brian didn't move. Maybe it was his civic duty to stop them or whatever but fuck that. Look where Brian's help had gotten Greta. He reached out tentatively, wondering if he could lock onto her thoughts, wondering if she still had any thoughts.

All he got was fuzz and he hoped that just meant his telepathy was still fucked not-- not anything else.

"What are we going to do with him?" Brian heard and then his arm was being grabbed and he was pulled back to his knees. Fucking assholes always dragging him around. Not that he cared, he honestly did not care.

He let himself sag against the hold. They wanted him upright, they could fucking keep him that way themselves.

He'd fucked up, it was as stark and as obvious as the end of the barrel that suddenly pressed against his forehead, two cold, metal circles pressing hard into his skin.

Right.

Brian had been wondering lately how he was going to die. At least this way would be quick.

"Go on then," Brian said because he never knew when to shut up. "I've got a headache, anyway."

He closed his eyes.

A shot rang out and Brian... did not die. Huh.

He opened his eyes. Shotgun Guy One was sprawled on the floor, a neat hole in the centre of his forehead and a spreading stain behind his head.

Shotgun Guy Two was staring at him with huge, shocked eyes. He turned to Brian, mouth open.

"Drop the gun," Gabe's voice said clearly over Brian's head and he did.

Brian stared. He genuinely could not believe he was still alive. Only Gabe's hands on his shoulders stopped him pitching back onto the ground.

"You okay?" Gabe asked quickly.

"Greta," Brian said pointing.

"On it," Gabe said, passing Brian off to someone else immediately. The someone else turned out to be Victoria Asher but Brian was feeling too bad to remember that he didn't like her.

She pulled up onto his feet, not letting him stay and watch Gabe bend over Greta. "You're a mess," she told him, helping him to sit down on the steps outside the store.

"Shut up," he told her, lack the energy to mean it. He let his head fall into his hands, dizzy.

"Here." Victoria slapped his hand with the side of a cold bottle and Brian was ashamed to admit that his first thought was soaring hope that it was beer.

It was water.

After Brian had drained half, he looked up and found Victoria watching him with serious eyes.

"Stay there," she said, "I'll be back in a minute." Brian watched her move to a car parked along the street, lean her head in to talk to someone in the back. He lost interest and turned back to the store, straining his fuzzy, fucked up telepathy for any kind of clue about how Greta was doing.

"You're going to strain something," he heard and whipped his head around so fast it took his eyes a second to catch up.

"Travis," he said and only didn't stand up because he was pretty sure he couldn't.

Travis looked like shit, pale and thin with bags under his eyes but his smile was wide and when he dropped down on the step next to Brian and flung an arm around him, he felt exactly the same.

Brian hadn't broken down in front of Travis since he was seventeen and newly out of Walton House and he wasn't going to do it now, but he maybe clung a little to Travis' forearm when Travis let it dangle casually down over Brian's shoulder. Travis didn't mention it.

"Shit, _man_," Travis breathed eventually, "You stink of booze. I kind of want to lick you."

Brian let his head drop forward, shaky. "I really fucked up," he said, because this was Travis. Brian could say that shit to him.

Travis hummed. "Vicky-T said some girl got shot," he said, not like he was asking.

"Greta." Brian swallowed hard. "It was my fault."

"You shoot her?" Travis asked.

Brian shook his head. "Still my fault," he said and Travis didn't argue. They didn't say anything, just watched as cops bustled around, sealing off the area with tape and roadblocks. There was an ambulance parked right in front of the store. Brian didn't know if it was a good or bad sign that they hadn't brought Greta out yet.

After a while, Victoria came out of the store. She knelt down in front of Brian but didn't try to touch him. "Your girl's going to be okay," she told him and Brian stared at her until his eyes prickled and he couldn't see her anymore.

He blinked and swallowed hard. He couldn't think of anything to say. She nodded anyway, smiled at Travis and walked over to talk to one of the local cops.

"Okay," Travis said, sitting back and moving his arm away from Brian. Brian felt cold. "Here's where I apologise."

Brian's head snapped up. "What?" he asked. He was kind of expecting an ass kicking, not an apology.

Travis laughed. "Ass kicking in a minute, yeah? Vicky-T tell you where I've been?"

Brian tried not to think _rehab_ but it was basically impossible not to think of something you were trying not to think about.

"Yep." Travis nodded slowly, like he couldn't tell the confusion and fucking terror that shot through Brian at that. "We're kind of big on the whole apologising thing in rehab. So." He shook out his shoulders, like maybe this was hard for him too. "I'm sorry I told you that you needed pills and booze and shit to deal with being a telepath. You don't."

"Maybe _you_ don't," Brian said automatically then felt like an asshole. What he should have said was that Travis didn't teach him that; Travis made it sound okay, but the doctors at Walton House taught it to him first, always testing different drugs on him.

Travis just shrugged. "You don't need it," he said. "Shit like that just masks it, yeah? And you need more every time for the same effect and then you end up drunk off your ass in the middle of a robbery, watching pretty girls get shot." His bland expression was totally fake. "Or whatever."

Brian shook his head. He knew something had to change, he just--

He couldn't cope with the idea of changing it. The last time he hadn't been able to control his telepathy, he'd ended up in Walton. He could not, would not, go through that again.

"Hey," Travis said, "I'm not here to drag you kicking and screaming somewhere you don't want to go." He grinned suddenly. "Actually, that's bullshit. I'm going to stick around until you realise you realise I'm totally right."

"You can't stay with me," Brian said, because snark was expected of him, not because he meant it.

Travis sighed, clasping a hand to his chest like Brian had wounded him. That just made Brian think of Greta again and the tiny bubble of pleasure he'd felt at getting to hang with Travis died away.

"Dude, I broke out of rehab for you, you better be fucking grateful," Travis told him.

"Broke out?" Brian repeated. "What?"

"Well." Travis made a so-so gesture with his hand. "My twenty-eight days were up but I was kind of planning to stay a while. It's cool there. They have good TV. But when Victoria let me know you were being a stubborn little bitch about coming to join me, I figured I better come down here myself. Didn't expect to find you in the middle of a fucking _hostage situation_ though."

Brian just shook his head because this was all way too much. He was starting to get a hangover even though he wasn't even fucking sober yet, his telepathy was twitching back to life in fits and snatches, and he just wanted to lie down and sleep for a year.

"If I let you come sleep in my spare room, are you going to lecture me about rehab again in the morning?" Brian asked because he couldn't face any more tonight.

"Yep," Travis told him cheerily. He rolled to his feet and pulled Brian up with him. "Every day. Twice on Sundays."

"Great," Brian muttered. He didn't want Travis to lecture him, but he kind didn't want him _not_ to either. He knew he couldn't keep on like this. Greta had gotten _shot_ because he'd been drunk off his ass and useless; that wasn't okay.

He let Travis pull him to his feet and nodded at Victoria when he caught her eye. They were bringing Greta out, carrying her on a stretcher and Brian straightened his shoulders.

"Travis?" he called. Travis turned back a step, let Brian fall in beside him.

"Good TV?" he asked, because he couldn't think how else to say _okay, maybe I'm listening_.

Travis draped his arm back around Brian's shoulders. "The best," he said and helped Brian drag himself along the sidewalk, back to his apartment.

***

**Now:**

Brian doesn't know how shitty he looks when he drags himself into the bullpen, but it must be bad because Gabe purses his lips sympathetically and doesn't run his mouth at all and Victoria winces and starts to apologise.

Brian holds up a hand. "No, don't. You were totally right to think I'd told him." He drags a chair over to her desk and straddles it backward. "How's my house?"

Apparently she saw it after the firefighters put out the flames because a picture of a charcoal shell that Brian suspects used to be his house pops up in her mind.

It's Brian's turn to wince.

"Yeah, great." He fiddles with her stress ball and, for once, she doesn't take it out of his hands. "What's the plan?"

"The plan is that you stay the fuck away from this case," Gabe tells him, coming to perch on the corner opposite Brian. He starts to play absently with Victoria's hair. She doesn't seem to notice.

"Yeah, right," Brian shoots back automatically until he sees that Gabe's serious. "Wait, what?"

"Someone tried to kill you," Victoria tells him, like he missed that fact. "That means they think you're dangerous."

"They tried to kill you too," Brian shoots back even though they didn't, really, just knocked her out.

Victoria purses her lips. "Yes, well. I _am_ dangerous. The best thing to do is for you to lay low for a while.

Right, like that's happening. "Fuck no. The best thing for me to do is to go out there."

"For them to kill you?"

"For bait." Gabe says slowly. He might not be able to read minds, but he pretty much always knows where Brian's going with something.

Brian clicks his fingers at him. "Exactly."

Gabe folds his arms. "Yeah, no. No way."

"Oh come on." Brian _hates_ when his plans get shut down. "It'll work, dude, seriously. We know they want me and they're probably watching."

"Mm," Gabe hums. "Everyone wants a piece of you, Schechter." He shakes his head. "There's no way I'm letting you do that. It's way too fucking dangerous."

Brian opens his mouth to argue then closes it again, angrily. He knows it's fucking dangerous but he needs to be out, doing something. Bob hates him and Brian really needs to hit someone.

"Go get some rest, Brian," Victoria says softly. She reaches out like she wants to put her hand on his arm then changes her mind when he flinches. He does not want to be touched right now; he isn't going to react well to sympathy.

"Where?" Brian demands. "I think my bed might be a little toasty right now."

"There's a hotel," Gabe starts then stops at the look Brian gives him. Brian doesn't want to go to the hotel and have to choose between sharing a room with Bob and knowing Bob thinks he's a freak or _not_ sharing a room with Bob and, still, knowing Bob thinks he's a freak.

"Brian," Victoria says, gently chiding.

"Get out of my head," he snaps. He feels bad for yelling a second later but he doesn't take it back. He should probably get away from people for a while. He turns away, throwing back over his shoulder, "I'm going to the hotel."

They don't try to stop him, but then he didn't expect them to. He's not actually planning to go to the hotel, he just wanted a reason to get away. There's a courtyard just outside the NSA building where you're not supposed to smoke but everyone does. Brian doesn't even bother to act subtle today, just knocks out a smoke from his packet and lights up.

"Smoking will make your teeth yellow," someone says and Brian turns around to find Z leaning back against the low wall encircling the courtyard. She's holding a lit cigarette but not smoking it. "So I heard what happened to your house," she adds when he doesn't answer.

"Yeah, let's not," Brian says and takes an angry drag on his cigarette.

"Makes you mad when these assholes fuck with what's yours, doesn't it?"

Brian shoots her a level look. "We're looking for Charlie," he says. He changes his mind, jerks a hand at the building. "_They're_ looking for Charlie. I'm in the way, apparently."

Z jaw clenches. "Oh, cry more," she snaps, angry. And yeah, okay, maybe Brian should take his pity party away from the woman whose kid is missing.

Brian opens his mouth to maybe try to sound like less of an asshole, but he stops when his phone rings. He checks the screen, expecting it to be Gabe or Victoria, checking he hasn't been kidnapped between their office and the parking lot. But it's not. It's Bob.

"Boyfriend?" Z asks, watching him.

"I don't have a boyfriend," Brian tells her, staring at the screen. He points vaguely at _away_. "I'm just going to--"

Z waves him off.

Brian thumbs the answer button for another three rings before telling himself to grow some fucking balls already. He accepts the call and steps down out of the courtyard onto the sidewalk. He's distracted wondering if he should speak first or if Bob will, and it's totally fucking humiliating, but he doesn't notice there's anyone behind him until something soft and sweet-smelling is pressed firmly over his nose and mouth.

If he weren't too busy passing out, he would feel completely vindicated because this was his plan to begin with. Gabe's going to be sorry he vetoed it now.

Hopefully.

***

When he blinks his eyes open, he's strapped to a gurney. Of course he is; that's only one step up the cliche ladder from locked in a drafty cage. Hey, maybe they can do that next. That'll be fun.

His mouth tastes sweet and dry from the chloroform and when he licks his lips, they taste of blood. Awesome, someone wasn't careful with him.

"How are you feeling?" asks a voice and Brian turns his head to zero in on the guy standing on Brian's left, just far enough away that Brian wouldn't be able to grab him even if he could get out of these fucking straps.

He's tall, kind of skinny, wearing a neatly pressed suit under his lab coat, and holding a syringe in his left hand. That really can't be good.

Brian squints at him. "I know you," he says because he does, he's sure of it. He's a little foggy from the chloroform still and he can't place him, but he's seen this fucker before.

Evil Scientist Dude turns to face him fully. "You do," he agrees and smiles. It's warm and disarming and shit, horribly familiar.

"Dr Norton?" Brian asks, voice rising sharply. He doesn't mean to sound so shrill except for how, oh yeah, he's totally and completely scandalised. Dr Norton was the only doctor in Walton House who was ever kind to Brian. "I don't--" He feels sixteen all over again and hates it.

Dr Norton moves his hand in a small, dorky wave. "Hello, Brian," he says, still smiling like he's genuinely pleased to have Brian strapped to his creepy torture gurney. "How do you feel?"

"I feel great," Brian tells him slowly, despite the fact he has to work his tongue a couple of times just to get it moving. "I could do with a coffee though if you're offering?"

"Hmm," Norton hums. "I don't think so. Not at the moment." He checks the level of whatever's in the syringe and steps forward. "I was hoping you'd still be unconscious for this bit. Sorry."

Brian flinches and tries to jerk away although he can't, of course, he's tied down like a fucking lab rat or something. "Um, hey, wait," he tries. "So, like, how have you been?"

"I've been marvellous," Norton says. He closes the distance between them and presses down on Brian's shoulder, holding him still while he sticks the needle into the side of his neck.

Fuck. Brian tries to kick but it's no good; he's tied down too tight.

"What's that supposed to-?" he starts to ask but Norton shakes his head.

"Just wait," he says, softly like he used to when he wanted to try new meds on Brian and Brian would freak out.

"Wait for what exactly?" Brian asks because he's never known when to keep his mouth shut.  
"Wait for—"

He breaks off with a gasp, startled silent by the sudden flash of pain that flashes through his head, running from the centre of his forehead to the top of his spine.

It's mindblowingly agonising for a fraction of a second then gone.

"How does that feel?" Norton asks, bending over Brian.

"Fine," Brian says slowly, distracted. He's aware that something is shifting in his head, expanding maybe. He can hear the faint drone of voices that weren't there before and he shakes himself, trying to shake it off.

Norton reaches up to the wall just above Brian's head and fingers a button there. "Good," he says. He presses the button and the straps holding Brian down retract. Brian tries to use the moment to punch Norton in the knee and escape but he can't quite move.

"Try to sit up." Norton gets an arm under his shoulders, helping him to sit. Brian scrabbles against the bed but his knees don't work right. It's like his brain is too busy to worry about petty things like moving his limbs where he wants them.

Brian's aware of voices, coming closer, there's nothing from Norton, he's shielding, maybe, but there are other voices, getting louder and louder, settling into his brain, people talking over each other, shouting and crying and laughing and whispering, living and dying, fucking and fighting and--

Brian turns his head again, trying to shake the voices loose. He tries to pull up his shields, but there's nothing there. It's like he's never had shields, like there's no such thing as shielding, like a million people have crawled into his head and are fighting for his attention all at once.

"Not a million," Norton says, "Six billion."

"What?" Brian doesn't know if he actually says it because he's lost track of where his mouth is, where any parts of his body are. He feels like a brain and nothing else.

"Think about it," Norton says like Brian's a lazy pupil. "Your range is what, twenty feet, thirty feet usually? Imagine if it was the whole world."

Brian would go crazy.

"No," Norton croons and Brian's really got to get a handle on what he's saying out loud. "Not once you'd learned control. You could pick out a single thought on the other side of the world. Imagine that, Brian, that kind of control."

"I control it just fine," Brian says, thinks he says anyway.

Norton touches Brian's cheek; it's kind of creepy and Brian wishes he wouldn't. "No, you manage it. Once I've refined my treatment, you'll have perfect control. You won't need the NSA to save you anymore."

Oh, goody, Norton's gone all mad scientist. That's really what Brian's life needs. "I thought you didn't believe me about the telepathy," Brian asks, or thinks he does. He can't be sure there's any connection between the words he's thinking and the words he's saying. "You agreed when they said it was schizophrenia."

Norton shakes his head like he's sad. "Yes," he says, "I was wrong. After the government took you, I got curious. I looked into your case more closely." He smiles tentatively like he's trying to make Brian forgive him.

Shit, Brian always thought he'd kind of imprinted on Norton but it looks like it was the other way around. "I've been trying to make it up to you, trying to find a way to help you and all the other people like you. I told your NSA that I could help but they didn't think it would work." He draws another syringe full of whatever shit he's dosing Brian up with. "So I had to test it myself. I thought perhaps it would work best on a child, but that wasn't to be and his father was far too stubborn to be any use at all. Comparatively, you're doing very well."

Oh good, that's good, as long as Brian's doing _well_.

"Wait," Brian says quickly, eyeing the syringe. He doesn't want any more holes in his body, thanks. He thinks frantically, trying to remember something, anything to stall Norton. Evil geniuses like to talk about their plans; Brian knows, he's watched a lot of James Bond.

"Your, uh--" minions? Goons? "The guys you sent to Victoria Asher's place. Their shielding was perfect. How'd you do that?"

Norton smiles like he's pleased Brian asked. Brian was so right; everyone likes to talk about how clever they are. Norton touches a small black button fastened to his collar. "Sound waves," he says, "Pitched specifically to provide total shielding."

Huh, okay. Brian is grudgingly impressed. "That's clever," he admits.

"It is. Once I'm finished--" Norton starts to say then breaks off, tilting his head.

Through the daze, Brian thinks he can hear an alarm blare, and he thinks it's just another noise in his head until he hears Norton curse.

"Stay here." Norton stops to look at him, eyeing the opened straps before shaking his head and leaving. Brian doesn't blame him, he'd count himself out too.

Except that's always dangerous.

It's hard as hell to roll onto his side, but he manages it. Sort of. He rocks himself too hard and falls from the gurney onto the floor. He's vaguely aware of the slap of his palms and knees on the glossy linoleum floor, but the noise inside his head is getting deafening. It's pretty fucking impossible to focus on anything else for long.

He stumbles to his feet, staggering rapidly into the nearest wall. He wants to curl up here and rock; this is going to make him mad, he knows it. There's a medicine cabinet at foot level and he crashes to his knees, fumbling through the contents, tossing bandaids and bandages aside.

He finds a little brown bottle, can't read the label but whatever, he's used to dosing himself on whatever's at hand, and he hopes this'll do what he needs it to.

He shakes out a couple of pills then, for safety's sake, adds a third. It's hard to dry swallow when he's not totally sure where his throat is, but they don't come back up so he thinks he's doing well.

It's such a relief to have the voices go fuzzy and indistinct, easier to think around, that it takes him a while to realise that he's high as a fucking kite now and that's just bad on so many levels.

He needs to find Charlie, find anyone else Norton might have been experimenting on and then get them all the hell out of here. He just hopes he can stay on his feet long enough to do it.

Norton didn't bother to lock the door behind himself because apparently Brian should not be up and walking. Score one for him, he thinks, then walks smack into the wall. _Shit, who put that there? _

He manoeuvres himself cautiously around the doorframe and takes off at what he thinks, hopes is a run, but might be more a canter, a skip, a sprint, a--

Fuck, but he's high.

The pills he took have totally fucked up his telepathy not just muffled it. He can't tell what he's hearing, whether it's happening a thousand miles away or just next door, so it's kind of a massive shock when he stumbles around a corner and runs straight into Bob.

"Okay," Brian says out loud, reaching up to touch Bob's face. Stubble, huh. "That's a really convincing hallucination."

The Bob hallucination snorts. "Right, like you wouldn't hallucinate Angelina Jolie in this kind of situation."

No, Brian's pretty sure Bob's exactly the person he'd hallucinate. He frowns, that stubble is actually really convincingly _real_.

"Bob?" he asks, just to check.

The Bob hallucination—

No, actual Bob. It's really and truly Bob inside Crazy Scientist Guy's lair.

This is weird. He grabs Brian's shoulders and shakes him a little.

"Wow, you are really fucking stoned. What did they give you?" Bob sounds mad.

Good, Brian thinks, except bad because when Bob's mad he sometimes likes to punch people in the face and while Brian agrees with that in theory, he'd rather Bob and the crazy people who run this place stayed far, far apart from each other.

Brian finds that if he widens his eyes far enough, he can concentrate long enough to give a coherent answer. That's a relief.

"I gave it to myself." He holds up a finger before Bob can get mad. Madder. "It was that or have my brain explode, okay? And--"

"This is a bad place for a chat," Bob interrupts him. "Your guys are securing downstairs, but there's still guys up here." He shoves a radio into Brian's hand. "Here, talk to Saporta."

"Gabe?" Brian asks, confused but taking the radio obediently. "What's-?"

"Fuck on a pogo stick, Schechter," Gabe's voice comes loud and distracted through the radio. "You okay?" He barrels on before Brian can answer. "Your boyfriend is even more stubborn than you are. What's with _that_?"

"Uh, he's not my-," Brian starts but wow, is that not the point right now.

"Look, we can't get up to you right now. Can you find somewhere secure to wait it out?" There's gunfire exploding behind Gabe. Brian should be there.

"I can help," he starts to say, automatically, then stops himself. "Yeah, okay, we'll wait for you."

Bob shoots him a look, but Gabe crows, pleased. "Yeah, _wait_ this time, Schechter," Gabe tells him.

"Copy," Brian agrees grudgingly and clicks the radio off.

"You're not going to argue?" Bob asks.

Brian just shakes his head. He's not sure how much longer these pills are going to work and when they stop, he's going to be no good to Bob at all. "We need to get somewhere defensible," he says and starts off down the corridor.

He reels into the wall a couple of times but mostly manages to run in a straight line. A glance over his shoulder shows him that Bob's following.

"You shouldn't be here," he tells him, because he really shouldn't. Brian never wanted Bob mixed up in this shit.

"Shut up," Bob snaps and Brian's about to resent that, but they round a corner and run straight into a tall woman in a very white labcoat, carrying a very black gun.

"Fuck," Brian hisses and punches the woman in her gun arm before she can react.

The woman snarls but doesn't drop the gun, dammit. It swings round and Brian launches himself onto Bob, knocking him down to the ground as bullets fly over their heads.

Bob makes a surprised _oof_ sound but he somehow manages to make sure that neither of them crack their heads on landing.

"Your life is crazy," he says, presumably under the impression that Brian hasn't noticed that already.

"Yeah, I noticed," Brian tells him and tries to kick the legs out from underneath the woman with the gun. His depth perception is all messed up so it takes two tries but on the second kick, she falls awkwardly, bashing her head into wall and Brian scrambles up, grabbing the gun from her in case she's not all the way unconscious.

She is. In fact--

No, Brian's not going to check if she's dead; Brian doesn't want to know.

"Shouldn't we-?" Bob asks then stops, shaking his head. "Never mind."

"Shouldn't we what?" Brian snaps. "My telepathy's fucked. I have no idea what you want to say."

Bob's pale but he meets Brian's eye. "What if she wakes up and comes after us?" he asks and oh, right.

"You want to kill her, be my guest," Brian says, starting down the corridor again. Bob catches up with him a second later.

"Yeah, no," Bob says and Brian shoots him a quick grin.

"Glad we're on the same page." He's got a gun in his hand now, and maybe that should make him feel better but he really does not do guns.

"Bob," he says softly, holding it out.

Bob looks surprised. "You don't want it?" he asks. Brian doesn't know what shows on his face but Bob dismisses his own question with a nod. He takes the gun out of Brian's hand, fingertips brushing Brian's, and holds it down low by his thigh.

They move forward slowly and Brian knows he should let Bob go first because Bob's the one with the gun, but he really cannot see himself letting that happen. Brian can handle himself in a fight, but he can admit that he mostly cheats by reading his opponent's mind. It's scary as hell not being able to do that.

"If you hear something, tell me," he orders.

Bob nods, seriously. Then he stops. "I hear something," he says and he's already pressing himself flat into the shadows against the wall before Brian can tell him to. _Good_, Brian thinks, distracted.

There are two guys running toward them. They're dressed as security, not doctors, and either way it doesn't matter. Everyone working here has shown a sincere lack of morals when it comes to trying to kill Brian.

"Stay back," he tells Bob and launches himself at the first guy, just before the guy would have spotted them.

They fall to the ground in an undignified heap of flailing limbs. The guy gets in one really good blow to the side of Brian's throat and Brian rears back, gasping for breath. He gets a fist in the stomach and, shit, he misses his telepathy something fierce. He _hates_ fighting fair.

"Brian," he hears behind him and oh, right, of course Bob's gone and gotten himself involved. Brian can hear sounds of a scuffle, punches and swearing, the familiar crack of bones but he can't spare the time to look right now.

There's a knife in the guy's utility belt and Brian doesn't have time to be squeamish; the other guy might be about to kill Bob. He pulls the knife out and stabs hard. His guy crumples to the floor, leaving Brian with the knife in his hand, soaked with blood from blade to handle, Brian's hands slick with it too.

He spins around, knife still raised, prepared to take down the guy Bob's fighting too, but Bob, wow, Bob apparently has it covered.

As Brian looks on, Bob ducks a blow and lifts the gun, shoots his guy in the face. Blood flies everywhere. Blood and other things Brian doesn't want to think about. It mostly sprays backwards but Bob's forearms end up soaked.

Brian staggers over to him and Bob's wide eyes meet his.

"Huh," Bob says, looking down at his bloody hands.

"Okay?" Brian asks, meaning to put his hand on Bob's arm but ending up with fingers on his wrist. Both their hands are bloody but none of it's theirs. Brian will take that.

"Yeah," Bob decides and apparently that's it for his freak out.

Or, not actually, because he's suddenly advancing on Brian, shoving him back into the wall. "Before anything _else_ happens," he says and kisses him.

It's not a reassuring kind of a kiss, it's full-on, hungry, _want-you-now_. Brian's already feeling wobbly and this doesn't help. If he winds his arms around Bob's neck, it's because he needs the help to stay upright, not because he's feeling stupidly relieved that Bob apparently doesn't hate him or anything.

Obviously.

Eventually though, he does have to untangle them. He doesn't _want_ to, but he has to. Getting shot to death because he was making out with Bob isn't... Well, it's not the worst way to die, actually. But not dying at all is still better.

"Come on," Brian says. He ducks and grabs a keycard from Bob's dead guy's belt. "I have had enough of this shit. Let's hole up somewhere and wait for the suits to do their thing."

"Aren't you a suit?" Bob asks, keeping pace with Brian along the corridor.

Brian laughs. It's not a totally genuine laugh but it still feels good.

"Please," he scoffs.

They've reached a locked door at the end of the corridor but one swipe of Brian's keycard has it open.

It's a storeroom. Not too big, but plenty big enough for the two of them to hide in for however long this is going to take. They slip inside and Brian grabs the edge of one cabinet, trying to tip it over in front of the door. It's heavy as fuck and Bob huffs a laugh, coming to take hold of the other end.

"I can do it," Brian argues, even though he can't; adrenaline counteracted the pills earlier when he was taking down those guys but it's fading now and he's starting to feel even loopier.

They push the cabinet up against the door, hopefully keeping it shut and, if not, at least providing themselves with some cover and then Brian's legs won't support him any more.

"Woah, hey," Bob says, sitting down next to him, their backs pressed to the cabinet. He puts his hand on Brian's knee, hesitates, but doesn't remove it.

That's got to be a good sign, Brian decides. He tries to lean his head back against the cabinet but it's cold and hard, not at all comfortable so he tips sideways and leans against Bob instead. Bob's always comfortable.

"Explain to me the logic of getting wasted?" Bob asks, but he loops his arm around Brian's shoulders.

"There's a crazy scientist dude," Brian tells him, aware there are better ways to start this story. "He injected me with some shit that like--" He shakes his head. Fuck, but it was horrible. If that's what happened to Ryan, Brian's impressed he isn't still catatonic. "It like, I don't know how to explain it, but normally I can read people's minds if they're within about twenty-five feet of me, right? With whatever he injected into me, it was like I could read _everyone's_ mind, everyone in the world."

"Shit," Bob breathes. He turns to face Brian suddenly. "Wait, getting wasted cuts off your _telepathy_?"

Brian winces and nods. Bob was kind of busy getting over being on fire for the very worst of Brian's addiction but he still caught a good chunk of the lead-up; Brian has no idea how Bob's going to react to this.

He doesn't expect Bob to laugh, even if it's a pained, hysterical sort of laugh. Bob drops his head toward his free hand but stops before it makes contact, making a face and trying to wipe the blood off on his pants.

"You seriously could have told me," Bob tells him. "Popping pills because of the _voices in your head_ is so much more understandable."

Brian shakes his head. "No," he says, "It's just a reason. It doesn't stop me being an addict." Shit, Travis is going to be so pissed at him for this. Having a telepathic sponsor kind of sucks.

"But you--" Bob cuts himself off. "You really could have told me," he repeats.

Brian's quiet for a minute. Eventually he thinks _fuck it_. It's not like they've got anything else to do. They might as well have a heart to heart in a stationery closet.

"You remember you asked me what Walton House was?" he asks, "Back before we--" He waves a hand to convey _made out, fell asleep and woke up to the house on fire_.

"Yeah," Bob says slowly. There's not much light in this closet but it's still easy to see his flush.

"It's a psychiatric hospital in Detroit," Brian hears himself saying. He fiddles with the laces on his shoes rather than look at Bob. "I stayed there for eight months when I was sixteen."

It could have been longer; it was years for Victoria before the NSA found her. One of Brian's best memories ever is that day that Gabe, barely older than Brian and clutching his brand new NSA badge, knelt down in front of him and promised that he wasn't crazy.

Bob looks like he would have sat down heavily if he wasn't already sitting. "What the actual fuck?" he asks.

"They were treating me for schizophrenia." Shit, Brian should not be telling him this; he's never talked about this with anyone really.

"You're not schizophrenic," Bob says immediately, not like he'd turn away from Brian if he were, just like he trusts that Brian would have told him. Yeah, isn't that ironic.

Brian quirks his lips. "No. I just had voices in my head."

"Oh shit," Bob breathes, like he understands.

"Yeah." Brian shrugs. "I told my mom my dad was cheating on her and I told my next door neighbour that her grandson was stealing from her and I always knew the answers in class because I could read the teachers' minds and no one wanted to believe any of it so they told me I was crazy instead."

Not that he's bitter. He's totally over it.

Bob's arm tightens around Brian suddenly, possessively. "Shit, Brian," he says then laughs harshly at himself. "I have no idea what to say."

Brian shakes his head. "I'm over it," he says, promises, lies. "But you get why I kind of don't tell _anyone_ right? Even--" He stumbles there because he can't bring himself to say _even people I might love_. "Even you."

Bob nods slowly. "Yeah, I do." The hand he has on Brian's shoulder is tracing patterns against the grain of his sleeve. It tickles but Brian doesn't want him to stop. "So how'd you end up with the NSA?"

Brian closes his eyes. Fuck, but he's tired. He's so used to lying about all of this, but there's no need, he realises, he can tell Bob if he wants and it turns out that he really does want. "Yeah, okay," he says and starts to tell Bob the whole damn story, Travis and Gabe and Walton and all of it.

"I had my own plans though," he concludes, "I wanted to tour so I fucked off as soon as they'd taught me enough that I could pass for, you know." He quirks a smile. "Normal."

Bob shakes his head, right on cue. "Schechter, you have never been normal," he says with a grin. Then he goes back to being serious, the same kind of serious he's been listening to Brian's whole sorry story with. "So why'd you change your mind?" He doesn't ask _why did you leave us?_ and Brian thinks he should get a lots of points for that. It had taken Bob and Patrick a long time to forgive Brian for abandoning them right when they were getting started, but it still hadn't taken as long as Brian thinks he deserved.

"Because it kept getting stronger and I tried to self-medicate, but it didn't help. You remember when I went to rehab?"

Bob nods.

"Yeah, well I didn't. I came here. I was totally fucked up and Travis didn't say I told you so or anything, just got me clean and showed me what I could do if I worked with them and-- Bob, I know you're pissed at me, but I'm doing good here, I swear."

Bob rolls his eyes, hard enough that Brian can swear he nearly _hears_ it. "Don't be stupid. I'm not pissed that you're like, some superhero saving the world. Although, fuck, Schechter, you're a _superhero saving the world_. That's hilarious."

Brian smacks him on the leg. "That's _not_ why you're pissed?" he asks doubtfully.

Bob makes an awkward shrugging motion. "Okay, I'll admit I was pissed when you first told me and, yeah, I was kind of freaked out. Now I'm just kind of embarrassed."

"Embarrassed?" Brian prompts when Bob doesn't say anything else.

"Yeah, well, you've been able to read every thought I've ever had," Bob mutters, not quite meeting Brian's eye. "And like, everything I've ever told you, you've already known."

"Yeah, mostly," Brian agrees, avoiding Bob's other point, because what can he say? It's true. "I, uh, I liked that you told me though," he admits, just to make them even on the embarrassment stakes.

Bob drums his free hand on the floor. "About, um. About the things I've thought about you?" Shit, he sounds so hesitant, this is going to be painful.

"The good stuff or the bad stuff?" Brian asks.

Bob doesn't rise to the bait. "The bad stuff, I meant," he tells Brian dryly. "No, I mean the other stuff."

"Is this where you tell me you didn't mean it? And it was only a fun fantasy in your head?" Brian's had that before.

"No." Bob's chin comes up and he looks right at Brian. "I meant it."

Brian tries not to grin like an idiot, but probably fails. "Cool," he says hoarsely.

Bob's own smile starts to appear then. "Cool?"

Brian nods slowly. "Oh, yeah."

Things are getting embarrassing enough with all the smiling and the implication of feelings that it's almost a relief when the first trickle of other people's thoughts start coming back to Brian.

It starts with Bob's and that's okay, that's surprisingly fine actually and a couple of the things he's thinking are enough to make Brian want to smile _again_ but then there's more, ones he recognises at first, like Gabe moving closer and Victoria punching someone in the mouth.

Go, Victoria, he thinks because that was a fucking good punch.

Then there's more, people he doesn't recognise. He presses his hands to his ears like that'll block it out and hopes like hell that the nightmare of earlier isn't about to start again.

"Telepathy's coming back," he tells Bob before Bob can ask. "It's. _Ow_." Someone just got their arm broken, no one he knows, hopefully one of the guards, but he can hear them swearing up a storm.

"What can I do?" Bob asks. He's shifted to face Brian, hands on Brian's shoulders.

What can he do? Brian needs to get a grip on this so he can pull up his shields, but that's impossible to do from right in the middle of the chaos.

"I'm really sorry," he tells Bob, "But I need to get in your head."

To give Bob credit, he doesn't even flinch. "Okay," he says, "Do I need to do anything?" He makes an awkward, abortive gesture toward Brian's face and Brian rolls his eyes.

"Dude, it's not a mindmeld," he says but he grabs Bob's hands anyway, just because.

It's hard to focus just on Bob when Brian's got all these other voices clamouring for his attention, but he knows Bob's brain voice well enough by now that he manages to find the thread, following it in and in, keeping his breathing slow, his grip on Bob's hands steady and--

There.

Brian's head snaps up. He scrambles to his feet and flings the door open, ignoring Bob yelling his name.

Yep, just like he saw. Gabe's walking down the corridor toward him, a bounce in his step and a shit eating grin on his face.

"Schechter!" he yells, "We got those motherfuckers."

"Yeah, not quite," Brian tells him and twists left. He's not exactly auditioning to be the next Penn or Teller here but there are a lot of empty nights on tour and he can throw a knife.

The guy groans and falls to the floor, Gabe spins around, his gun rising, and Bob whistles from right behind Brian.

"Okay, that was pretty badass," he says.

Brian grins. The guy on the floor is still groaning. Brian rolls his eyes. "Shut up," he says. "I hit you in the shoulder."

 

"Thanks," Gabe says slowly, shaking his head. He steps forward, kicks the guy's gun away and glares. "Not classy, dude," he scolds then looks up at Brian. "Didn't I tell you to wait?"

"When does Brian ever do as he's told?" Victoria asks from behind Gabe and it makes Brian grin to see him jump.

Then he gets a good look at Victoria. She's standing there, Z at her side, and the both of them are banged up and dirty, blood smeared across their clothes and through their hair. They're both grinning their faces off, though, and Charlie is sitting securely on Z's hip.

He waves at Brian.

Feeling an hysterical laugh start to bubble up in his throat, Brian waves back.

***

Brian and Bob are weirdly tentative around each other when they finally get to the hotel the NSA is putting them up in.

It's a damn nice hotel, but Brian's too tired to really appreciate it right now. It also doesn't make up for the fact that his house _burned down_, but he's trying not to think about that.

Brian's telepathy is still doing weird things, zoning in and out. It freaked him out bad enough that he actually let one of the annoyingly pokey doctors look him over at the NSA. She seemed pretty sure he'd be back to normal by the morning.

He hopes she's right. His telepathy has caused a fuck load of problems, but he wouldn't actually be without it, as weird as that is to admit.

"You need anything?" Bob asks. He's being solicitous and it's creepy.

"Fuck sake, Bryar, I'm not an invalid," Brian complains, toeing off his shoes and padding over to the window to close the heavy curtains. So, he's paranoid. Doesn't mean they're not after him or that Dr Norton isn't still out there somewhere.

Bob holds up his hands. "Oh?" he says, "Fine. Here I thought someone had been screwing with your brain and one of your six senses was on the fritz. My mistake." He turns toward the bathroom. "I'm gonna go shower."

For a second, Brian thinks he's actually managed to hurt Bob's feelings, but he _knows_ Bob, even without the telepathy. That little upward curl of his lip means he's fucking with Brian.

Asshole.

"Asshole," Brian says and grins when Bob flips him off before closing the bathroom door.

Brian means to call Gabe to check on everything at NSA, really he does, but he sits down on the bed for a second and wakes to Bob's hands on his belt.

"Um," Brian asks sleepily, raising his eyebrows. Not that he objects to Bob undressing him, but he'd kind of like to be awake and consulted.

Bob continues what he's doing, sliding Brian's belt out of its loops. He doesn't go any further than that and, now he's awake, Brian's kind of disappointed about that. Bob's still pink from his shower and little droplets of water are running down his throat into his t-shirt, which is white and going nicely see-through in places.

"Just thought you shouldn't sleep in your belt," Bob tells him, keeping his voice low. "Go back to sleep."

Yeah, Brian would like to. He's completely disgusting though, so instead he flaps a hand at Bob until Bob relents and pulls him upright.

"Shower," Brian mumbles and stumbles off toward the bathroom.

"You gonna be able to stand up that long?" Bob calls after him.

Brian pokes his head back around the bathroom door. "Why, Bobert, are you offering to hold me up in the shower?"

"Yeah," Bob tells him levelly. He ruins it with a self-conscious little smile. "That's all I'm offering to hold though. Tonight."

That's all Brian would be able to accept tonight too, he's way too tired for anything else, but his stomach still rolls over lazily at Bob's little smirk on _tonight_. "Yeah?" he asks.

Bob nods seriously. "Yeah."

"Hold that thought," Brian tells him. This is a bad idea, getting together with Bob is still such a bad idea, but Brian wants it so much. Maybe there's a solution, he's just too tired to think of one right now.

He stays in the shower just long enough to make sure he's no longer completely rank, then crawls into bed beside Bob.

There's another bed in the room, it just doesn't occur to Brian to use it until he's already dropping his arm around Bob's waist, fitting his hand to the curve of Bob's hip.

"I thought I was holding my thought," Bob mumbles. His eyes are only half open and his mouth is smushed against his pillow.

"You're so sexy, I can't keep my hands off you," Brian tells him dryly. The fact that that's kind of true is really not the point.

Bob snorts. Oh yeah, so sexy. "Shut up and go to sleep," he says, rolling onto his side and reaching back for Brian.

Brian laughs. "Are we _spooning_?" he asks, incredulous.

Bob smacks him lightly on the thigh but relaxes when Brian presses against his back, when Brian can't quite stop himself from brushing his mouth against the exposed nape of Bob's neck. It's not even a come-on; he's just happy to have Bob here.

"We're _sleeping_," Bob tells him and they do.

***

**Epilogue:**

When Brian wakes up, he feels achy but warm and comfortable. Someone – a Bob someone – has an arm around his waist, stroking his belly evenly and breathing softly on the back of his shoulder.

Brian stretches and mutters something even he doesn't understand, pressing his face into the pillow and wondering if he can stay in this moment forever.

Bob's arm tightens around him and, "I can hear you laughing at me, asshole," Brian mutters.

"How do you feel?" Bob asks. He kisses the back of Brian's neck and oh, Brian likes that.

"_Really_ good," Brian sighs then realises hey, shit, his telepathy's stabilised. That is so much better. He rolls over and grins at Bob. "Yeah, good."

"Cool," Bob says and kisses him.

Morning breath, Brian thinks but Bob doesn't so Brian just goes with it. It's not like it matters, they made out yesterday while covered in other people's brain gunk. Actually, that's kind of gross.

Brian pulls back. "Are _you_ okay?" he asks, "I mean like. With everything yesterday." _That you had to kill someone?_ He doesn't think he needs to spell it out.

Bob makes a face. "I'm way better when I don't have to think about it," he says. Brian wants to have a look in his mind and see if he's telling the truth, but even if he's not, Brian probably owes him the right to lie about it.

Brian starts to sit up. "So, do you think this place has breakfast?" he asks, ignoring how he's half hard in his boxers. He's so used by now to repressing and denying himself sex that he'd think it would be easier to keep doing it. This is _Bob_ though so it's kind of incredibly hard. Pun intended.

"Hey." Bob reaches over, squeezes his thigh. "I kind of thought we were going in another direction." He thinks _SEX_ in big, block capitals and Brian laughs, startled.

Bob shrugs. "Just in case you weren't getting it. I know how you are before your coffee, Schechter."

Brian shakes his head, doesn't quite meet Bob's eyes. "I don't--" he starts. "I kind of-- It's hard for me to have sex."

Bob's eyebrows shoot up and Brian smacks him.

"Not like _that_. Asshole. Just, would you seriously be comfortable with having me in your brain while you were like, fucking me or something?" The idea of Bob fucking him does capital t Things to Brian and, apparently to Bob, but Bob does him the courtesy of thinking about what he asked as well.

"You mean like, if I was pretending to be really into something but then you got inside my head and knew that I was faking?" He looks hard at Brian. "Jesus, Schechter, has that actually happened to you?"

Brian shrugs and shakes his head. That's only one of many reasons why he doesn't have sex. The other ones are definitely worse.

Bob sighs and sits up. "Brian," he says seriously. He puts his hands on Brian's knees. "I've wanted you for what feels like half my life by this point, okay?" He turns pink; Bob never talks about his feelings. "You are welcome in my head."

Brian looks at him. He doesn't know if this is worth it. As much as he'd really like to do this, he doesn't know if it's worth messing up their friendship.

"Welcome," Bob says again and oh. Okay.

Brian slides seamlessly into Bob's mind. There's no resistance there at all. He slips past the general surface thoughts like, _is he in my head right now?_ and _shit, don't think about sex, he'll think that's all I want_ and _this bed is crazy comfortable, I'm never getting up_ to the place that's all feelings, no words.

Half a second in there and Brian can't suppress a small, startled gasp because shit, Bob kind of feels a _lot_ about him, apparently. Like, a mega lot. Way more than Brian knows how to deal with this early in the morning.

"Bob," Brian says, because he doesn't know how to say _shit_ or _me too_ or _seriously? me?_ He reaches out shaky hands and reels Bob in, kissing him until they're both just panting helplessly into each others' mouths.

Bob pushes forward and Brian goes with it, stretching out on his back because he's still inside Bob's head, can see where Bob's going with this and, yeah, Brian is totally on board.

"Get naked," Bob breathes against Brian's neck. He licks Brian's tattoo and Brian twists, distracted. "Naked," Bob says again and this time Brian does.

Skin on skin is amazing. It's been so long, Brian had mostly forgotten the thrill of this, just making out, someone else's skin and hair and sweat rubbing together with his.

Bob is hard against Brian's hip and Brian's hard against his and Brian can't think of anything better than this. He can feel everything that Bob's feeling and it magnifies everything, makes it more than twice as good.

He's not sure it's fair though and, "I should--" he starts to say, talking against the corner of Bob's mouth.

Bob shakes his head. "No, stay," he says even though there's no way he should be able to tell that Brian's there.

"Can you feel--?" Brian asks and Bob shrugs, distracted and sweaty and not really committed to this conversation at all. "Kind of. I kind of like it."

He kisses Brian again then, cutting off any arguments even though Brian doesn't want to argue. He can feel what he's doing to Bob when he reaches down and squeezes Bob's ass and he can feel what Bob's doing to him when he palms their cocks together and it's like an infinite feedback loop of really hot sex.

Brian meant what he said about Bob fucking him, but he doesn't think they're going to get there right now. Bob's squeezing their cocks together, grip strong and rhythmic and it's so fucking good, Brian can barely stand it.

"Shit," he mumbles, feeling heat start to build in his belly even though it's way too soon. He reaches down between Bob's legs, rolling and squeezing his balls because if he's going to come embarrassingly quick then he's not going to do it alone.

Bob's thoughts jump and fizzle in a really happy way at that touch, but Brian can feel there's something else, something he wants more and, for once, Brian doesn't feel bad about chasing those thoughts until he can read them properly.

He drags his hands up over Bob's chest, going exactly where Bob's thoughts are telling him to go. Bob's nipples are hard and dusky pink and he makes broken, startled noises when Brian pinches one, hard.

"Shit, you like that," Brian mutters and does it again. Bob's rhythm stutters for a second before speeding up and Brian ducks his head, bites at Bob's chest, his nipples, tugs a little on his chest hair.

"That is really fucking cheating," Bob groans, sounding appreciative all the same. The hot splash of his come over Brian's cock is basically all Brian needs and the he's joining in, clinging to Bob's arms so tight he probably leaves bruises.

The combination of feeling Bob's orgasm from the inside out plus Brian's own orgasm is a heady fucking trip of awesomeness for a couple of seconds, but then it's too much and Brian pulls back, shaking through his own aftershocks.

"Wow," Bob says after a while. He rolls off Brian but flings out an arm, hand on the centre of Brian's chest. "Is it always going to be that good?" He sounds sleepy and curious, not like he's demanding that it has to be.

Brian can't help it, he starts to grin and can't stop. "I guess it could be," he says, not really talking about the sex so much as like, everything.

Bob shifts over onto his stomach and traces a finger idly around the patterns of tattoos on Brian's arm. "So this whole secret government agent thing?" he asks.

Brian tenses automatically. "Yeah?"

"Do you get to drive an Aston Martin? Because I always thought I'd make a pretty good Bond girl."

Brian laughs, started and relieved. "Bryar, I promise if they give me a fancy car, I will buy you a pretty dress."

Bob reaches up and wallops Brian with a pillow, which Brian thinks is totally uncalled for; Bob started it. Brian snatches the pillow out of his hand and rolls up onto his knees, straddling Bob while he smacks him firmly in the chest. Brian is a specially trained government telepath after all; he can totally win a pillow fight.

One of Bob's hands slides up Brian's thigh, distracting him from what he was doing and oh, maybe not. Bob squeezes and Brian thinks he might be fine with letting Bob win.

Just this once.

/End


End file.
